Jack is the biggest joke in the game industry already but he also costs people millions in litigation for his causes. You remember that old line "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" it's become "it's all fun and game until someone litigates" and Thompson has proven he's willing to do that.
Hell just when you think Thompson might give the public a break for a month, he comes out again such as this.
Welcome to congress. When I first read this I was like that makes perfect sense. But after reading your post it just illustrations one more time that the government (democrats and republicans alike) still don't have a f-ing clue what the internet is.
What's even worse is they are likely going to run one of these clowns for congress next year, and the republican on the other side is probably going to say something stupid like "broadband is 200Kps" which will just illustrate neither side can grasp this.
The FCC should be there to inform and teach them about this stuff, the FCC is a commission in the employee of congress, but now we have congress telling them how to classify stuff? If the FCC tries to explain it I'm sure one of the many congressmen or women (again both sides) would come back with "that's not what it means now". Which is likely why the FCC doesn't try to help them understand and spends all their day worried about the Howard Stern's of the world. (yes I know they do more, I'm trying to say that they aren't doing what they should be doing)
I didn't exactly say Twilight princess wasn't new. It was, the Wiimote alone gave probably the best adventure experience in years, that's what we need in the new game, but we really need a more adult puzzles in it (not sexual but harder) and more usability, like the spinner could have been cool, but it was just too hard to use effectily, so the way it was implement was fine.
No. Mirror moving and fire_activating puzzle are only stables of the game because those are the items you get in the game.
Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventure was one of the best games for me in recent years because of one thing, it really brought a new look at the old Zelda items. It increased the difficulty because it requested the player do things outside of the box at times.
What I think Zelda actually needs, is some difficulty, and a new set of items. The classics (bombs, fire arrows even the mirror shield) are all good, and should stay, but let's take another look at the hammer from Link to the Past (my favorite console game of all time), or the whistle from the original game? These are items that could be used in interesting uses now, but has yet to be. How about adding in a way the player could go from dark world to light world with a mirror in a game like Link to the past on the fly to get around some enemies, but have both worlds be available?
Zelda doesn't need a overhaul, Zelda needs to grow up a bit, become a little older (there was a good amount of darkness in the last story) and give the players some hard puzzles. The biggest problem I see can be illustrated in the mirror puzzles, every puzzle requires a 90 or a 45 degree angle. There's many more degrees there' How about a nice 33 degree bank shot off a wall mirror you can only move left or right but not change the direction? How about some 3 dimensional mirror puzzles (they have had a couple I think but not much)?
Also in addition some more persistent bosses, the best Zelda bosses are ones you meet more than once, how about you enter a dungeon and the boss comes to you to help you out a couple times because he's actually waiting for someone to free him from his prison, he'll still have to fight you but it'll break up the game a bit.
These ideas aren't "full overhaul" these are just unique additions to the old formula. But I am a little biased, however every time someone says they are going to do an overhaul we either get what I'm talking about here (a non overhaul) or a game that is so difference it's just a completely different genre.
I used every single one of those programs and none of them worked 100 percent of the time, most were unable to open the files. If the format was ready, then this shouldn't be a problem. A couple players could play them all but playing the music to reencode it as mp3s is such a bastardization it shouldn't be allowable.
I've heard a lot about this ape and it's the reason why I'm mp3 only. Basically I've read up about ape, sounds really good, sounds interesting. However I've tried using ape which contained a japanese artist. Let's just say no player or converter worked 100 percent of the time.
I couldn't find a single way to batch these files to Mp3, I saw.ape and.cue files as well, which if ape allows is just frightening.
As you said Mp3s are simple, small and easier to use. OGG, FLAC, and APE have annoyed me in the past and will annoy me again in the future, not because they are any worse, but because their better features come at a price of compatibility and size.
Financial firms need to fingerprint all employees to be in compliance with the federal regulators. This has nothing to do with screening and all to do with regulation.
Believe me this is hardly the strangest request that the markets make of firms, but it's a major one for all employees.
First off it's warmer than 150 years ago. Good for you to believing what you hear. However accurate weather records weren't around 150 years ago, sure we might have a few locations, but a few locations with inefficent tools? Yeah that's scientific.
Right... because laws of physics data and everything proves exactly what's happening? Not that it's getting warmer, but the exact effect emissions, the exact amount a change of 10 percent lower emissions will do? It doesn't help that there's those who will skew the data off in both directions which just doesn't help. Yet you want me to blindly believe when there still is issues with most major reports and when others use those reports blindly. Hell the article points out the problems of the Hockey stick graph, The hockey stick graph and Mann's work has been proven to be skewed his data is erroneous at best and falsified at worse, and yet people blindly believe it's still ok? Oh right because it's on their side.
I don't want the impossible but reasonable doubt is still there, we can agree that it's warmer, we can't agree on how warmer, why it's warmer, or even what would have happened if there was 0 emissions, so how can we say there's no reasonable doubt? REASONABLE people can't accept either side just yet. But obviously not everyone is looking for truth as it seems some of the scientists have their agenda to sell.
This article uses conjecture, and fuzzy words. "Most scientists believe" what's most? 51 percent? The three guys you talked to today? What percentage believed the world was flat?
Want to prove global warming or disprove it, give me irrefutable proof (and don't start with the "it's warmer than it was"). Want to know how gravity works, drop an apple, you see gravity at work, the fact no one could come up with it til newton doesn't mean it didn't exist, it meant no one could prove it.
All we have today on both sides of the global warming case is this proof that's "maybe it'll work" theoretical stuff. And then we get the extremists on the global warming side who claim anything out of the norm is the work of global warming (oh we have unpredictable weather, it'll be more unpredictable next year). Of course the extremists on the non global warming side won't admit it's heating up at all.
Still until I see something a little more concrete and stop seeing little pieces like this which can't even prove anything conclusively (it just links to reports from times when his side was considered right by some people). I'm going to continue to remain in the middle and stick to the "let's actually study it until we understand it" opinion, because the zealotry (especially from people who claim to be unbiased) is what really is not helping.
I've seen some outsourcing in which the company that I was working just didn't have the man power and couldn't ramp up the man power to fulfill the need. Considering that it was either that or have huge amount of employees that only worked temporarily worked on unimportant stuff and was just churned out. In this case the outsourcing was done in addition to a 20 percent increase in this company's work force, they just didn't have enough manpower to do it otherwise.
However let's consider the other options we might have instead of outsourcing? IBM moving all their employees out of America? Why have a company in America when you can get cheaper work in India?
That doesn't mean all outsourcing is good, but it's one of those things America's going to have to allow or else some companies will move to other countries.
First off thank you for not insulting me for my mistake and keeping a civil tone, something I've rarely seen in any political debate.
Second off I don't really see the difference, instead of removing every attorney at the beginning of the term, why not wait til you see that their politics don't jive with your politics. I dislike Clinton's approach of firing everyone immediately no matter what their politics, the fact he removed them all tells that either he was doing favors for those who got in or only wanted people who agreed with him, either way I disagree with that policy.
On the other hand with Bush's move he changed the attorney's later at his discretion. Is it partisan politics? I've not looked into enough to decide, but I'll bet it is (he's not going to remove people he agrees with) but at the same time is it his choice? Yes.
The real question, has every president ahead of him enjoyed a similar power? In this respect, yes. That doesn't mean everything he does is gravy with me, the signing statement things isn't exactly kosher in my book. But this is the same power that every president has enjoyed and it appears to only be a problem today.
Your right though, Clinton fired all the federal judges as one of his earlier acts as presidents and the democratic party though that was peachy. Apparently it's ok if you're a democrat, or is it only ok if you fire them in the first week in office?
Personally I think it's all about limiting what Bush can do in his final year in office, they want to remove all the authority that the President has. The sad thing is when 2008 rolls around if there's a major shift in power with a democratic president and a republican congress, the democrats big push will be giving all those rights back to the presidential office, so really it's partisan politics at it's finest.
Apparently the highway test is done at a maximum of 60 miles and hour and an average of 48 miles an hour? I don't know anyone who drives on the highway like that.
Apparently they also have all accessories off. AC? nope. Radio? Nope. Weather? 75 degrees.
Let's face facts, the EPA mileage estimates are bubcas. We have manufactures tailoring their cars to tests rather then the way ACTUAL people drive. I think it's time to demand the EPA revamp their entire testing procedures and not just trying to randomly estimate.
I mean in Chicago there's a substitute teacher who showed "brokeback mountain" in a school, and the same thought must have gone through her mind.
You're educators, there's millions of things that your student doesn't learn in their 4 years at your school that they should have? Why do you feel the need to push the envelope when it's already been proven that you haven't even been doing an adequate job at preparing the children for college/the next year of school/life.
BUT DUDE! HALO is the best game ever. No other FPS shooter had good controls, and story and multiplayer? I mean come on dude. It's not like there's some game out there named after radioactive decay that has similar gameplay and a multiplayer only game type that people are going crazy over.
Ok enough of that, here's my problem with User generated content. Sony and Microsoft don't want it. They want user generated content, that they approve and can charge for, but I've yet to hear them say "we're willing to take everything you'll give us and distribute it for free" they don't have the power or willingness to undertake it and they never will, Nintendo doubly so.
User generated content is Sony's new catch phrase (it's not like You-tube mentioned it years before) but the problem is they can't provide it. Want to allow people to "remix your games"? Great that was in frequency over 5 years ago, that was User generated content, however if you want to make your own song and share it, you're SOL. Want to share videos of yourself singing along to some song? GREAT! their new network will allow it... as long as it's a preapproved track, you're video has nothing in appropriate, and sony's ok by it.
Why is UT so big? Because epic made a game where ANYONE can design anything for it and then ANYONE can get that data and add it to their game, hell UT itself will download it for you (most of the time, damn NAT).
Why is Oblivion is big on the PC? Because anyone can create anything for it and anyone can mod their game with it to create a unique experience.
Think Microsoft thinks that's a good idea? Sure they do, but they arn't going to pay for the servers, or heaven forbid allow someone to access their propietary hard drive and load files on it. THEY COULD LOAD ILLEGAL FILES!!! They could connect to the hard drive and find some way to hack into the system and run anything, even pirated files, or PS3 files, or NES files. That would be bad.
Until Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft get over this preconceived notion that any power that is given to the fans will result in them abusing the system and then not buying games, we will never legally (important... LEGAL) have "user generated content". We will only have "console maker approved user generated content" and if you can fit "purchasable" into that phrase, believe me they will.
Here's how it goes, Gore requested all votes in three counties be recounted by hand, the state then investigated and saw that the tabulation had no problem and that a manual recount wasn't needed. Then Gore decided to force the 4 counties to tabulate the votes by hand. This is fine. However the big problem is that this created issues because NEITHER party was willing to agree on how the recount should take place. The deadline for a decision approached, the squabbling the shit kicking by both parties and the cameras slowed everything down.
The correct situation is one of two things. A. The two parties agree on the process, bar the cameras and do it quickly. The hanging chad shit was a joke and was just one more thing that slowed everything down.
Or B. Gore concedes when he realized that there's just too many problems with the process and he lost in the public eye. His presidency would seem illegitimate to most people even if he won, but instead he decided to tarnish the presidency, that was already looking a little problematic after Clinton.
I'm not saying either party went about this the right or wrong way, but the Gore campaign came out of it looking notably unclean, and only did about as much damage to themselves as the Bush party. The fact that it's brought up time and time again is just proof of bitterness. Maybe it's just me but I long for the days when both parties at least had some dignity about them instead of this infighting we've seen in the last 15 years.
Actually the minute the voting was over and the litigation started.
The correct situation was Bush wins the count, Gore graciously steps down and allows the presidency to remain untarnished instead of starting a bitch fight. It sucks for Gore, but he doesn't get the title of "spoiled child", which will plague him any time he runs for office. The "I'm too stupid to figure out the right candidate to vote for" doesn't work as there's more than enough solutions that are alternatives to "guess randomly".
Btw the votes apparently were counted after the fact. Bush won even with the recount.
Is it any wonder democrats are trying to ignore Florida's opinion after 2000 though?
Proper accounting. Every single download is NOT a sale. Every single illegal purchase in China is NOT a sale.
If you're product is not available in China and someone downloads it, you can make a case for piracy, but it's not theft as they can not buy your product. Unless you have the product available to that person with out having to import it then the person buying that music is not stealing the cost of the dvd from you.
There's a million of these little mistakes that the MPAA and RIAA don't want to fix because we'll realize it's far less of a problem than they can claim when they shout about 400 million dollars in loss. I'm sure when the tax man comeths that number is a little different, don't you think?
It's more about threating to attack a place or person because of religious beliefs or significance, the same way someone would attack a place because of racial features or significant.
I don't think the law talks about threating a religion itself, it's more about the people who believe the religion or the place they worship.
IANAL but I'm sure this is one of the many "hate crime" laws they passed in rapid succession.
People think better in non-cramped spaces? Cubicles should go? Beer at company meetings improves morale? (The last is from my current employer, it does).
New mayor from evil empire comes to town, mayor turns out to be evil final boss (or some other major enemy for the character).
Random rapscallion is picked by an underground resistance force to help them out. Random girl is found with in the first 5 hours, she turns out to be princess. Some people are loyal to the princess even though they work with the empire.
Honestly how can you say the story is that good when they continue to use the same cliches they always have. The first one is similar to so many games. The second one is FF 6/7/9/12. Have you tried games like Xenogears or saga where the characters are diverse and have full back stories which surprise most people rather than being classic cliches? Even Star ocean 3 which is far from my favorite RPG (for issues where it finishes a story point and then makes you wander) has interesting characters who don't fall into "main villian" "Hero" "princess" roles with in the first 30 minutes.
They did a good job at fleshing out the story for FFXII but from what I saw (far from the whole game, though I've heard about the governor being one of the final bosses) it is a cookie cutter game.
Honestly, I'm a little sick of Square, they want to keep FF13 around for 10 years make it a variety of games, a whole universe. They want to make real time games, but keep turn based around. They want a lot of stuff.
Personally I'm fine with them branding everything final fantasy, it lets me know which products to avoid. I've no interest in them anymore. When Sakaguchi left to make mistwalker a lot of Square's power left. They may still get the sales, but sales have been proven to be a false indicator of market sucess, (halo and madden do well every iteration and neither are particularly excellent).
Maybe it's just that I don't have 60+ hours to throw at every game any more. I recently started working in the industry and the big change I find is I am now over analytical of the games I play, because I'm learning from them and about what the game play will notice. But I think the bigger problem is that when I pick up an RPG if I put in the 60+ hours I need to actually be interested in playing it. I played Tales of Abyss and Zelda for more than 40 a piece, and not many others recently. I thought the reason is I don't want to hook up my PS2 again, and that's possible, but the real reason is I don't want to put in 60 + hours on a game that's not worth 60+ hours, and sadly a lot of Square's properties hit that area, even Final Fantasy XII didn't grab me in 10 hours and placed it down.
I think the real problem is Square has constantly been commited to graphics over gameplay and story. Even Dragon Quest 8 (which is part of the Enix branch of the company) was graphically interesting, but utterly lacking in any sort of gameplay improvement that could have made the game less tedious.
I think the big three ideas that should be attempted for "next gen" RPGs is 1. Less tedious gameplay. This is simple, don't make me have to level everything, give me risk vs reward style of exp over a normal base amount, make me always fighting new things. FFX did this well, FFXII not so much. If you fight a enemy more than 20 times, the game is sunk. If your boss on a closed off area (where you can't explore the world) requires them to level up to it, you're sunk. Players doesn't know where to go next? You're lost.
2. Real time gameplay, not real time menu choices. Star ocean and tales gets this. The action is real time. If you want to promote real time gameplay let the player control the character, not just issue orders and have to wait to get control back. All FFXII was is a version of Grandia II and Wild Arms where you issued orders they did the little motion and you issued a second order. You could roam but it didn't improve anything.
3. Story Story Story. Square seemed to forget this after 7 (hell even before 7) You're an RPG, You want your players to connect to the character, build the story. Graphics are flash and they get people in the doors but story is what gets them to stay. AND GIVE PEOPLE DAMM SYNOPSIS! When I put down FFXII and then pick it up a month later I forgot what I was doing and was completely lost. When I put tales of the abyss down for 2 weeks I was even more lost, and yet I found my way because they gave a synopsis that was easy to find and follow. We don't need 100 percent of the feeling and effect back, but at least give us a way to remember what we've done, not just "we need to go here next".
Listen, Square all your fans are no longer 18 year olds with short attention spans, some of us are now 20+ year olds out of college with real jobs where they can't spend 60 hours in a row beating your games. We're still willing to play them but let's meet half way, at least get us some tools where we're not playing games on the same system as we were in college or high school.
4 posts each saying about the same thing that's just an single experience with apparently no analytical data to back it up, just that "it used to be very cold and now it's not, here's some numbers that people remember, but have no statistical basis for the area, region, time, or anything"
This is the type of proof that I've seen and the fact is if I told you "one day it was really really cold" would you tell me global cooling was happening, or that global warming isn't happening? So why should I take a random occurrence that could have a variety of solar and global explanations, to mean that possibly the ozone layer is depleted with out a causality study.
Oh that's right because you say so. So once again a global warming follower is trying to bully or discredit someone who doesn't believe in their "science", but instead of using facts, they use second hand accounts, and harassment.
Here's a couple thoughts you should consider next time around. Proof isn't anecdotal. Hearsay just doesn't work when you're claiming "a global crisis" and prediction isn't equal to truth unless people can reproduce your studies and can come to the same conclusion in a controlled environment (you've heard of these things, double blind studies) as opposed to a person shouting the answer over their shoulder.
Slashdot Mirror
Jack is the biggest joke in the game industry already but he also costs people millions in litigation for his causes. You remember that old line "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" it's become "it's all fun and game until someone litigates" and Thompson has proven he's willing to do that.
Hell just when you think Thompson might give the public a break for a month, he comes out again such as this.
No he was using that as his key, and they just busted his code, nice work academics, now everyone can read his email.
"Oooh penis enlargement ad".
Welcome to congress. When I first read this I was like that makes perfect sense. But after reading your post it just illustrations one more time that the government (democrats and republicans alike) still don't have a f-ing clue what the internet is.
What's even worse is they are likely going to run one of these clowns for congress next year, and the republican on the other side is probably going to say something stupid like "broadband is 200Kps" which will just illustrate neither side can grasp this.
The FCC should be there to inform and teach them about this stuff, the FCC is a commission in the employee of congress, but now we have congress telling them how to classify stuff? If the FCC tries to explain it I'm sure one of the many congressmen or women (again both sides) would come back with "that's not what it means now". Which is likely why the FCC doesn't try to help them understand and spends all their day worried about the Howard Stern's of the world. (yes I know they do more, I'm trying to say that they aren't doing what they should be doing)
I didn't exactly say Twilight princess wasn't new. It was, the Wiimote alone gave probably the best adventure experience in years, that's what we need in the new game, but we really need a more adult puzzles in it (not sexual but harder) and more usability, like the spinner could have been cool, but it was just too hard to use effectily, so the way it was implement was fine.
No. Mirror moving and fire_activating puzzle are only stables of the game because those are the items you get in the game.
Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventure was one of the best games for me in recent years because of one thing, it really brought a new look at the old Zelda items. It increased the difficulty because it requested the player do things outside of the box at times.
What I think Zelda actually needs, is some difficulty, and a new set of items. The classics (bombs, fire arrows even the mirror shield) are all good, and should stay, but let's take another look at the hammer from Link to the Past (my favorite console game of all time), or the whistle from the original game? These are items that could be used in interesting uses now, but has yet to be. How about adding in a way the player could go from dark world to light world with a mirror in a game like Link to the past on the fly to get around some enemies, but have both worlds be available?
Zelda doesn't need a overhaul, Zelda needs to grow up a bit, become a little older (there was a good amount of darkness in the last story) and give the players some hard puzzles. The biggest problem I see can be illustrated in the mirror puzzles, every puzzle requires a 90 or a 45 degree angle. There's many more degrees there' How about a nice 33 degree bank shot off a wall mirror you can only move left or right but not change the direction? How about some 3 dimensional mirror puzzles (they have had a couple I think but not much)?
Also in addition some more persistent bosses, the best Zelda bosses are ones you meet more than once, how about you enter a dungeon and the boss comes to you to help you out a couple times because he's actually waiting for someone to free him from his prison, he'll still have to fight you but it'll break up the game a bit.
These ideas aren't "full overhaul" these are just unique additions to the old formula. But I am a little biased, however every time someone says they are going to do an overhaul we either get what I'm talking about here (a non overhaul) or a game that is so difference it's just a completely different genre.
I used every single one of those programs and none of them worked 100 percent of the time, most were unable to open the files. If the format was ready, then this shouldn't be a problem. A couple players could play them all but playing the music to reencode it as mp3s is such a bastardization it shouldn't be allowable.
I've heard a lot about this ape and it's the reason why I'm mp3 only. Basically I've read up about ape, sounds really good, sounds interesting. However I've tried using ape which contained a japanese artist. Let's just say no player or converter worked 100 percent of the time.
.ape and .cue files as well, which if ape allows is just frightening.
I couldn't find a single way to batch these files to Mp3, I saw
As you said Mp3s are simple, small and easier to use. OGG, FLAC, and APE have annoyed me in the past and will annoy me again in the future, not because they are any worse, but because their better features come at a price of compatibility and size.
Financial firms need to fingerprint all employees to be in compliance with the federal regulators. This has nothing to do with screening and all to do with regulation.
Believe me this is hardly the strangest request that the markets make of firms, but it's a major one for all employees.
First off it's warmer than 150 years ago. Good for you to believing what you hear. However accurate weather records weren't around 150 years ago, sure we might have a few locations, but a few locations with inefficent tools? Yeah that's scientific.
Right... because laws of physics data and everything proves exactly what's happening? Not that it's getting warmer, but the exact effect emissions, the exact amount a change of 10 percent lower emissions will do? It doesn't help that there's those who will skew the data off in both directions which just doesn't help. Yet you want me to blindly believe when there still is issues with most major reports and when others use those reports blindly. Hell the article points out the problems of the Hockey stick graph, The hockey stick graph and Mann's work has been proven to be skewed his data is erroneous at best and falsified at worse, and yet people blindly believe it's still ok? Oh right because it's on their side.
I don't want the impossible but reasonable doubt is still there, we can agree that it's warmer, we can't agree on how warmer, why it's warmer, or even what would have happened if there was 0 emissions, so how can we say there's no reasonable doubt? REASONABLE people can't accept either side just yet. But obviously not everyone is looking for truth as it seems some of the scientists have their agenda to sell.
This article uses conjecture, and fuzzy words. "Most scientists believe" what's most? 51 percent? The three guys you talked to today? What percentage believed the world was flat?
Want to prove global warming or disprove it, give me irrefutable proof (and don't start with the "it's warmer than it was"). Want to know how gravity works, drop an apple, you see gravity at work, the fact no one could come up with it til newton doesn't mean it didn't exist, it meant no one could prove it.
All we have today on both sides of the global warming case is this proof that's "maybe it'll work" theoretical stuff. And then we get the extremists on the global warming side who claim anything out of the norm is the work of global warming (oh we have unpredictable weather, it'll be more unpredictable next year). Of course the extremists on the non global warming side won't admit it's heating up at all.
Still until I see something a little more concrete and stop seeing little pieces like this which can't even prove anything conclusively (it just links to reports from times when his side was considered right by some people). I'm going to continue to remain in the middle and stick to the "let's actually study it until we understand it" opinion, because the zealotry (especially from people who claim to be unbiased) is what really is not helping.
Whoa whoa whoa... you saw what happened to Geico.
I've seen some outsourcing in which the company that I was working just didn't have the man power and couldn't ramp up the man power to fulfill the need. Considering that it was either that or have huge amount of employees that only worked temporarily worked on unimportant stuff and was just churned out. In this case the outsourcing was done in addition to a 20 percent increase in this company's work force, they just didn't have enough manpower to do it otherwise.
However let's consider the other options we might have instead of outsourcing? IBM moving all their employees out of America? Why have a company in America when you can get cheaper work in India?
That doesn't mean all outsourcing is good, but it's one of those things America's going to have to allow or else some companies will move to other countries.
First off thank you for not insulting me for my mistake and keeping a civil tone, something I've rarely seen in any political debate.
Second off I don't really see the difference, instead of removing every attorney at the beginning of the term, why not wait til you see that their politics don't jive with your politics. I dislike Clinton's approach of firing everyone immediately no matter what their politics, the fact he removed them all tells that either he was doing favors for those who got in or only wanted people who agreed with him, either way I disagree with that policy.
On the other hand with Bush's move he changed the attorney's later at his discretion. Is it partisan politics? I've not looked into enough to decide, but I'll bet it is (he's not going to remove people he agrees with) but at the same time is it his choice? Yes.
The real question, has every president ahead of him enjoyed a similar power? In this respect, yes. That doesn't mean everything he does is gravy with me, the signing statement things isn't exactly kosher in my book. But this is the same power that every president has enjoyed and it appears to only be a problem today.
Please, reason in politics.
Your right though, Clinton fired all the federal judges as one of his earlier acts as presidents and the democratic party though that was peachy. Apparently it's ok if you're a democrat, or is it only ok if you fire them in the first week in office?
Personally I think it's all about limiting what Bush can do in his final year in office, they want to remove all the authority that the President has. The sad thing is when 2008 rolls around if there's a major shift in power with a democratic president and a republican congress, the democrats big push will be giving all those rights back to the presidential office, so really it's partisan politics at it's finest.
Ok this is an improvement, but allow me to point out another blotch on the EPA testing...
Information available http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/420f06009.htm
Apparently the highway test is done at a maximum of 60 miles and hour and an average of 48 miles an hour? I don't know anyone who drives on the highway like that.
Apparently they also have all accessories off. AC? nope. Radio? Nope. Weather? 75 degrees.
Let's face facts, the EPA mileage estimates are bubcas. We have manufactures tailoring their cars to tests rather then the way ACTUAL people drive. I think it's time to demand the EPA revamp their entire testing procedures and not just trying to randomly estimate.
"Nothing could go wrong with this idea."
I mean in Chicago there's a substitute teacher who showed "brokeback mountain" in a school, and the same thought must have gone through her mind.
You're educators, there's millions of things that your student doesn't learn in their 4 years at your school that they should have? Why do you feel the need to push the envelope when it's already been proven that you haven't even been doing an adequate job at preparing the children for college/the next year of school/life.
BUT DUDE! HALO is the best game ever. No other FPS shooter had good controls, and story and multiplayer? I mean come on dude. It's not like there's some game out there named after radioactive decay that has similar gameplay and a multiplayer only game type that people are going crazy over.
Ok enough of that, here's my problem with User generated content. Sony and Microsoft don't want it. They want user generated content, that they approve and can charge for, but I've yet to hear them say "we're willing to take everything you'll give us and distribute it for free" they don't have the power or willingness to undertake it and they never will, Nintendo doubly so.
User generated content is Sony's new catch phrase (it's not like You-tube mentioned it years before) but the problem is they can't provide it. Want to allow people to "remix your games"? Great that was in frequency over 5 years ago, that was User generated content, however if you want to make your own song and share it, you're SOL. Want to share videos of yourself singing along to some song? GREAT! their new network will allow it... as long as it's a preapproved track, you're video has nothing in appropriate, and sony's ok by it.
Why is UT so big? Because epic made a game where ANYONE can design anything for it and then ANYONE can get that data and add it to their game, hell UT itself will download it for you (most of the time, damn NAT).
Why is Oblivion is big on the PC? Because anyone can create anything for it and anyone can mod their game with it to create a unique experience.
Think Microsoft thinks that's a good idea? Sure they do, but they arn't going to pay for the servers, or heaven forbid allow someone to access their propietary hard drive and load files on it. THEY COULD LOAD ILLEGAL FILES!!! They could connect to the hard drive and find some way to hack into the system and run anything, even pirated files, or PS3 files, or NES files. That would be bad.
Until Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft get over this preconceived notion that any power that is given to the fans will result in them abusing the system and then not buying games, we will never legally (important... LEGAL) have "user generated content". We will only have "console maker approved user generated content" and if you can fit "purchasable" into that phrase, believe me they will.
Here's how it goes, Gore requested all votes in three counties be recounted by hand, the state then investigated and saw that the tabulation had no problem and that a manual recount wasn't needed. Then Gore decided to force the 4 counties to tabulate the votes by hand. This is fine. However the big problem is that this created issues because NEITHER party was willing to agree on how the recount should take place. The deadline for a decision approached, the squabbling the shit kicking by both parties and the cameras slowed everything down.
The correct situation is one of two things. A. The two parties agree on the process, bar the cameras and do it quickly. The hanging chad shit was a joke and was just one more thing that slowed everything down.
Or B. Gore concedes when he realized that there's just too many problems with the process and he lost in the public eye. His presidency would seem illegitimate to most people even if he won, but instead he decided to tarnish the presidency, that was already looking a little problematic after Clinton.
I'm not saying either party went about this the right or wrong way, but the Gore campaign came out of it looking notably unclean, and only did about as much damage to themselves as the Bush party. The fact that it's brought up time and time again is just proof of bitterness. Maybe it's just me but I long for the days when both parties at least had some dignity about them instead of this infighting we've seen in the last 15 years.
Actually the minute the voting was over and the litigation started.
The correct situation was Bush wins the count, Gore graciously steps down and allows the presidency to remain untarnished instead of starting a bitch fight. It sucks for Gore, but he doesn't get the title of "spoiled child", which will plague him any time he runs for office. The "I'm too stupid to figure out the right candidate to vote for" doesn't work as there's more than enough solutions that are alternatives to "guess randomly".
Btw the votes apparently were counted after the fact. Bush won even with the recount.
Is it any wonder democrats are trying to ignore Florida's opinion after 2000 though?
Proper accounting. Every single download is NOT a sale. Every single illegal purchase in China is NOT a sale.
If you're product is not available in China and someone downloads it, you can make a case for piracy, but it's not theft as they can not buy your product. Unless you have the product available to that person with out having to import it then the person buying that music is not stealing the cost of the dvd from you.
There's a million of these little mistakes that the MPAA and RIAA don't want to fix because we'll realize it's far less of a problem than they can claim when they shout about 400 million dollars in loss. I'm sure when the tax man comeths that number is a little different, don't you think?
It's more about threating to attack a place or person because of religious beliefs or significance, the same way someone would attack a place because of racial features or significant.
I don't think the law talks about threating a religion itself, it's more about the people who believe the religion or the place they worship.
IANAL but I'm sure this is one of the many "hate crime" laws they passed in rapid succession.
People think better in non-cramped spaces? Cubicles should go? Beer at company meetings improves morale? (The last is from my current employer, it does).
New mayor from evil empire comes to town, mayor turns out to be evil final boss (or some other major enemy for the character).
Random rapscallion is picked by an underground resistance force to help them out. Random girl is found with in the first 5 hours, she turns out to be princess. Some people are loyal to the princess even though they work with the empire.
Honestly how can you say the story is that good when they continue to use the same cliches they always have. The first one is similar to so many games. The second one is FF 6/7/9/12. Have you tried games like Xenogears or saga where the characters are diverse and have full back stories which surprise most people rather than being classic cliches? Even Star ocean 3 which is far from my favorite RPG (for issues where it finishes a story point and then makes you wander) has interesting characters who don't fall into "main villian" "Hero" "princess" roles with in the first 30 minutes.
They did a good job at fleshing out the story for FFXII but from what I saw (far from the whole game, though I've heard about the governor being one of the final bosses) it is a cookie cutter game.
Honestly, I'm a little sick of Square, they want to keep FF13 around for 10 years make it a variety of games, a whole universe. They want to make real time games, but keep turn based around. They want a lot of stuff.
Personally I'm fine with them branding everything final fantasy, it lets me know which products to avoid. I've no interest in them anymore. When Sakaguchi left to make mistwalker a lot of Square's power left. They may still get the sales, but sales have been proven to be a false indicator of market sucess, (halo and madden do well every iteration and neither are particularly excellent).
Maybe it's just that I don't have 60+ hours to throw at every game any more. I recently started working in the industry and the big change I find is I am now over analytical of the games I play, because I'm learning from them and about what the game play will notice. But I think the bigger problem is that when I pick up an RPG if I put in the 60+ hours I need to actually be interested in playing it. I played Tales of Abyss and Zelda for more than 40 a piece, and not many others recently. I thought the reason is I don't want to hook up my PS2 again, and that's possible, but the real reason is I don't want to put in 60 + hours on a game that's not worth 60+ hours, and sadly a lot of Square's properties hit that area, even Final Fantasy XII didn't grab me in 10 hours and placed it down.
I think the real problem is Square has constantly been commited to graphics over gameplay and story. Even Dragon Quest 8 (which is part of the Enix branch of the company) was graphically interesting, but utterly lacking in any sort of gameplay improvement that could have made the game less tedious.
I think the big three ideas that should be attempted for "next gen" RPGs is
1. Less tedious gameplay.
This is simple, don't make me have to level everything, give me risk vs reward style of exp over a normal base amount, make me always fighting new things. FFX did this well, FFXII not so much. If you fight a enemy more than 20 times, the game is sunk. If your boss on a closed off area (where you can't explore the world) requires them to level up to it, you're sunk. Players doesn't know where to go next? You're lost.
2. Real time gameplay, not real time menu choices.
Star ocean and tales gets this. The action is real time. If you want to promote real time gameplay let the player control the character, not just issue orders and have to wait to get control back. All FFXII was is a version of Grandia II and Wild Arms where you issued orders they did the little motion and you issued a second order. You could roam but it didn't improve anything.
3. Story Story Story.
Square seemed to forget this after 7 (hell even before 7) You're an RPG, You want your players to connect to the character, build the story. Graphics are flash and they get people in the doors but story is what gets them to stay. AND GIVE PEOPLE DAMM SYNOPSIS! When I put down FFXII and then pick it up a month later I forgot what I was doing and was completely lost. When I put tales of the abyss down for 2 weeks I was even more lost, and yet I found my way because they gave a synopsis that was easy to find and follow. We don't need 100 percent of the feeling and effect back, but at least give us a way to remember what we've done, not just "we need to go here next".
Listen, Square all your fans are no longer 18 year olds with short attention spans, some of us are now 20+ year olds out of college with real jobs where they can't spend 60 hours in a row beating your games. We're still willing to play them but let's meet half way, at least get us some tools where we're not playing games on the same system as we were in college or high school.
4 posts each saying about the same thing that's just an single experience with apparently no analytical data to back it up, just that "it used to be very cold and now it's not, here's some numbers that people remember, but have no statistical basis for the area, region, time, or anything"
This is the type of proof that I've seen and the fact is if I told you "one day it was really really cold" would you tell me global cooling was happening, or that global warming isn't happening? So why should I take a random occurrence that could have a variety of solar and global explanations, to mean that possibly the ozone layer is depleted with out a causality study.
Oh that's right because you say so. So once again a global warming follower is trying to bully or discredit someone who doesn't believe in their "science", but instead of using facts, they use second hand accounts, and harassment.
Here's a couple thoughts you should consider next time around. Proof isn't anecdotal. Hearsay just doesn't work when you're claiming "a global crisis" and prediction isn't equal to truth unless people can reproduce your studies and can come to the same conclusion in a controlled environment (you've heard of these things, double blind studies) as opposed to a person shouting the answer over their shoulder.