Fact of the matter is: women over the age of 25, are desperate for intelligent, nice, financially stable men. Younger than that, women are still looking for traditional masculine stereotypes.
Sad, but true.
We "intelligent, nice, financially stable men" get the privilege of having a girl after she's already been used by a significant portion of the horny, lowliest, creepiest male population out there...ya know, when she's also approaching her more desperate and less desirable "degrading looks" period. And we're supposed to view this in some sort of positive light? Like "sure, she let the scum of the earth have their way with her in her prime for 7+ years, but CHEER UP, you got the discarded remains in the end, right?"
Pardon me if I don't vomit in disgust.
And women wonder why they get treated like objects. After 7 years of THAT kind of treatment at the hands of women, I want to treat them like the objects they deserve to get treated like...after all, it's the life they CHOSE for 7 freakin years.
From the pen of a cynical, bitter, nice guy that has no problems in the confidence, manners, or hygiene department.
* We acted in concord with NATO, the UN, and our allies, and we got the job done without alienated every other country in the world.
Kosovo was NOT a unilateral UN move. Russia was hotly against it and was appalled at the action taken. Germany in turn was concerned at Russia's response.
We are *done* in Kosovo. When Clinton was selling the war to the American people, all the Republican congresspeople and right-wing pundits said this was going to be Clinton's Vietnam, that we were entering a quagmire, etc. etc. Guess what? Situation is peaceful.
It's not hard to have peaceful results when your goals are minimal. We didn't even send in troops. Fact of the matter is that Kosovo was strategically and economically unimportant, and the action taken was an inconsequential exercise of military effort. Clinton's touted "reason" for taking action was "humanitarian reasons". If this be the case, any number of other countries could be seen as similar targets. Why did he not go into any of them as well? Are they not similar arguments you see posted against Bush these days? (ala, "Why Iraq? Why not Country X?")
Read up on some 1999 public opinion of Clinton's military excursions here and here
The parallels are incredibly amusing. So much that people bitch about Bush about today they were bitching about Clinton back in 1999. There were virtually identical claims way back in 1999 that Kosovo would see a dramatic decline in European confidence in American leadership due to international outcry about the bombings.
We have had no combat fatalities in Kosovo. We are done and the war is over. Service people have died, but not because of enemy combatants and insurgents
True, but you're trying to compare a ground war + 3 year occupation to a FOUR MONTH PERIOD in which no ground force was present and our only intervention involved bomb dropping, much of which was done in unmanned vehicles. Kosovo wasn't a war, it was a skirmish.
Clinton never lied to the American people
Some would argue he was just a better liar. That's why people never recognized him as such.
Bush's team had absolutely no plan for reconstructing Iraq, and they have no plan to this day
Anything to back up this claim with?
2000+ soldiers have died, and there is no end in sight. The violence it getting worse, not better. The military is stretched to their limits. This cannot continue without instituting a draft
Say what? Now you're just trying to be sensationalistic.
1737 combat deaths so far (not 2000+), since that's the yardstick you're using with Clinton.
No end in sight? Every day, more Iraqi security forces are trained. For every Iraqi squadron that can be deployed effectively, a U.S. squadron can be pulled back. Some reports are here or here.
And of COURSE the military "can continue" without a draft. They're still fighting over there now, right? That's "continuing." Now, whether or not we could fight _another_ war is a different story, though I'm pretty sure we still could without a draft. But it wouldn't be pleasant on the economy. You act as if Iraq is a growing effort instead of the resource sink it actually is. The current alotment of soldiers we have there now is the MAX we will have there. If the numbers will go anywhere, they will go DOWN. There's already talk of limited pullout.
FDR packed the supreme court and installed himself for an unprecedented 3rd time. Talk about abuse of power. But, he got us in a good position to win WWII, and his New Deal programs modernized the US, so that now America is a modern industrial country
Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router and Notebook Network Card
Yeah that's a great product I use every day... wait I've never heard of it before. I thought we learnt not to produce products before the standards are finalised from the last Wi-Fi fiasco...
Man, don't diss something with real world results. I own the thing. The results and benchmarks are not bullshit. I used to own a 54G router (which sits in the basement where the cable comes in), and my wireless signal would barely flicker red (sometimes losing connectivity altogether) up in my second story bedroom.
With the Pre-N, I have a full 100% green bar and 108 Mpbs throughput.
Just because something isn't mainstream yet doesn't diminish it's greatest. Google was awesome WAY before it became a household name. Similar things can be said for Firefox and any number of any other products, such as Trillian/Miranda. Just because YOU haven't heard of it doesn't mean it isn't a great product. Hell, I'd argue most mainstream stuff borders on crap actually.
it wasn't really sarcastic. it was highlighting the fact that the "smoking in public places" issue is just a red herring to distract people from the REAL health risk, carcinogens like benzene in petrol fumes, and (worst of all), diesel exhaust
Red herring? Not a real health risk? You must be joking
What of the blackened lungs full of tar that show proof positive evidence of cigarette health risks?
I don't see hundreds of people suffering from lung cancer from living among cars all their life.
I mean, we don't exactly lock ourselves in small, enclosed, poorly ventilated areas with running CARS (unless we're committing suicide)
But you go to any club or bar, and you can practically _see_ the smoke all around you.
Enclosures matter in relation to localized public health. If you only want to think long term, fine...general pollution (aka dumping things into the atmosphere) is a nasty health risk in itself. But you can't claim that public smoking is somehow a red herring, when in fact it is very real.
Why is it that I can't even get an inexpensive plan?
We just need a phone for emergency situations so paying this much money for an emergency phone is pretty ridiculous. No plan even offers a low-cost plan
Incorrect, sir.
There most certainly are options, especially for people in your situation (emergency only phone use). The answer lies in pre-paid cell phone plans, such as Liberty Wireless who offer low premium, no-frills, no-contract plans as low as $30/month. These are ideal for those who only use the phone infrequently or only in emergencies. You can cancel the plan at any time without any penalty, and payment method is identical to non-prepaid (monthly fee). There are other pre-paid carriers around as well, some of whom have even lower rates (I saw one for $20/month somewhere I remember). Even some of the big names such as Cingular are beginning to offer pre-paid plans due to growing popularity.
They're not for everybody, but in your situation, I think it's what you want.
They had a pretty big hit called "Flagpole Sitta" I'd say some 5 or 6 years ago, and they came sort of at the tail end of the radio-rock 90's one hit wonders. Think of Eve 6, Semisonic ("Closing Time"), Fastball ("The Way"), or The Verve Pipe ("Freshman") doing something like this.
You're lumping Eve 6 into the 90s one-hit wonders category? That's nuts...their entire debut album was great (As well as their subsequent ones). Hell, even Semisonic is a stretch to fit that category...most of their first album was decent too (singing in my sleep, completely pleased, this will be my year). I'll definitely give ya the Verve tho. And I'd call Fastball a two-hit wonder. They had Fire Escape too.
My wife schedules each patient a reasonable amount of time for the problem that they're calling to see her about. On occasion, some of those problems turn out to be more complex and urgent than they expressed over the phone.
While I mostly agree with your post, I offer a second alternative. Instead of squeezing as many back-to-back patients in possible into a day's schedule, at the cost of a PATIENT's time and money when appointments run over...how about leaving a buffer between appointments and simply not scheduling as many people? Since doctors REGULARLY have patients w/ appointments waiting upwards of an hour, I would see this as a reasonable thing to do.
However, that would require the doctor voluntarily losing money to make the patient's experience more convenient. Why do that when you can just steal their time instead?
If your body, which is something you have simply by virtue of existing, is the sole reason that people pay attention to you
And THIS maam, is precisely why you (and most of your species) are entirely offbase. You seem to think that simply because men value physical beauty that we are entirely ignorant of anything more. It's WOMEN, not men, that perpetuate this ludicrous stereotype. My last girlfriend had no chest at all (34A). I appreciated her more for her intelligence, her humor, and her cuteness. Yet I also appreciate big boobs on other women and in video games. You find a problem with this?
On a side note, should I be offended when I see video games with muscular men? (which is pretty much any male video game hero). How bout the comments about Vin Diesel or whoever the "hot-throb of the month" is? You act as if this "physical appreciation" is a gender specific trait, when in fact it happens in both directions and we just aren't as stuck up about it. Tell ya what, when women are flocking to the nice skinny geeks in glasses instead of swooning over the assholes with muscles, then you can talk about one-sided physical focus.
Call it misogynistic if you'd like. I just hate ignorance and hypocrisy. And since we're all generalizing here, your gender is full of it.
And how did the core concept of Zelda change with the Wind Waker? The gameplay was astonishingly similar to Ocarina of Time, and the basic storyline was pretty much the same as it always was
Because I believe that Ocarina of Time too completely changed the core concept. There was always a serious "tone" to Zelda, all the way up thru SNES's "A Link to the Past". It wasn't until N64 got ahold of it with Majora's Mask that it started going downhill. That was a MAJOR core concept change, not to mention a shift towards more childish graphics and light heartedness. By the time it got around to Gamecube, the core concept was already long past shat on.
Play the original Legend of Zelda, Link 2, and SNES Link to the Past. Then compare that to Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker. You should immediately be able to spot the difference in core concept, mood, and plot. Hell, even the original Legend of Zelda music sounded badass. The main score was very heroic and adventurous. Most of the other music was eerie or intense.
So you think the Link featured back in the Eighties was adult and badass? With a visual style that wasn't cartoonish?
He wasn't THAT cartoonish. I mean, come on, he was Nintendo, so of course there was a little cartoon in him. But there's a HUGE leap between cel-shaded link and original link. I mean hell, look at the original Legend of Zelda box. It was gold with a fairly badass looking shield on it. It wasn't colored in pastels and flowers and goofy looking animals and other ridiculousness. Similar with Zelda 2...badass looking sword on a gold box. Then, fast forward to this ludicrousness.
Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against cel-shading. Frankly, I think it looks rather slick. But it ticks me off that they did it to Link. He looked teen-ish in early Zelda. But then they made him look like he was still in diapers.
I've never understood people like you. So the game is fun and has spot on control, but you can't enjoy the game because you're hanging on to some weird voice telling you that because it's got "kiddy' graphics it's for kids? WHO CARES as ong as IT'S FUN? Do the graphics insult you in some way? Do people come over while you are playing a single player game in the privacy of your own home and point and laugh at you calling you a wimpy two year old girl when you pop the disc in?
You sir have completely missed the point.
Why do painters/sketchartisists paint or draw still-life when they can just scribble between the lines with some crayons...it's fun, right?
Why do people play chess when they could just play checkers? Still fun, right?
Why watch a game of football on TV when you can just watch the cartoon network 24/7? It's fun after all.
Let me ask you this...do you still face-paint? bob for apples? go trick-or-treating? giggle and gossip? have pillow fights? I'm sure there is tons of shit that is "still fun" that you don't do simply because you grew out of it or found more "adult" activity to replace it with...be it mountain climbing or kayaking or sex or what-have-you.
This isn't a matter of simple maturity and fear of being laughed at. It is _less fun_ to play games when the style is aesthetically offensive to you.
This is an argument over whether the game is fun, and whether it could be MORE fun if casted realistically. Christ, would you enjoy a game like Grand Turismo 4 if all the cars and courses and base concept were the same, but it was cel-shaded and cartoony? How bout NFL 2k6? kill.zone?
Cartoons and cartoonyness has its place. Games like Mario Party and Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers are irresistably fun. However, a game like Zelda _suffers_ from excessive cartoonyness in the same way a game like Metroid or Starfox would if it were casted in the same light. These are action games with semi-badass characters. We aren't looking for Call of Duty type style here. We're looking for what we've come to know and love. If Metroid, give me an experience equivalent to what I once knew as Metroid (and for the most part, they did). The same goes for Zelda.
Which is the more adult person? The one who plays KillZone? Or the one who plays Chu Chu Rocket unabashedly because it's FUN.
The one who plays both. And can realize a good game from a bad game.
The cartoony cel-shaded Link really was a crime though. Very much like Final Fantasy online was a crime. You don't take a well-loved, well-established game with a deeply entrenched fan base and COMPLETELY CHANGE the core concept, but keep the name.
I didn't even require a "realistic" adult-looking link. I just wanted a "maturity level" on par with the originals. The cartoony Link was FAR from "on par" when compared to the classic Zelda.
It is certainly his fault that the disaster recovery wasn't handled well - the aftermath of Katrina was absolutely awful and Bush seemed asleep at the wheel.
That's one of the most assinine things I've ever heard, typical of trollish Slashdot anti-bush spoutings. You act as if Bush was sitting there with his finger on the button, purposely stalling recovery efforts.
Listen up...it is NOT the President's job to spearhead disaster recovery efforts. We have an existing infrastructure to do just that...FEMA, and to a lesser extent charitable organizations like the Red Cross. If you want to acuse anyone of impotence in the face of disaster, place the blame squarely where it belongs. Namely, FIRSTLY on the New Orleans mayor and state govt for failing to adequately prepare or get people out themselves. SECONDLY, on organizations meant to deal with this.
Following a lag in the infrastructure, Bush promptly addressed the issue. What more can you ask for?
and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why?
Any number of reasons...who are you to know all? Maybe more organizations would simply add more confusion and disorganization to a situation that is ALREADY a major communications blunder. Maybe it's a national security issue. Maybe we simply don't need the resources. Who knows? I certainly don't. Do you? I do know that no one passes up a free lunch for no reason, so obviously the govt MUST have their reasons.
They may be competing with Microsoft's MSN and Hotmail divisions, but not on the desktop.
Give them time.
Don't you see it? At first Google was just competing with web search (MSN competition). Then they moved into email space (Hotmail competition). Then they moved into the Desktop search space (Vista compeition). Now they're moving into IM space (more MSN competition). And unlike many other companies, they're INTEGRATING all their stuff together, just the way Microsoft does. Not only are they expanding their turf, but they're doing the job RIGHT. They're releasing damn good products everytime, and they're being recognized for it.
Microsoft has good reason to be scared shitless of Google. Not only does Google have all the real talent (Phds and smart geeks) in this day and age, but they have a wallet large enough to do something with that talent, and the public opinion to net a vast flock of users. On top of that, they're expanding like crazy. It seems like every other week they're releasing some new product, branching in some other direction. Personally, I believe it's only a matter of time before they release a whole OS. Though I think a Google browser is the next logical step.
I don't think you give Google enough credit. They're innovating and expanding at a rapid pace. Most search engine companies would sit on their laurels and "just do the job" if they released a search engine as good as Google's. 5 years ago, could you have imagined Google releasing an email client, or a desktop search program? Or let me put it in a way that isn't biased by current day thought. Could you imagine Infoseek or Webcrawler or Excite or Altavista doing the same? There's plenty of examples of web search companies that "did their one thing." Google is not one of them. They don't see "a market". They see "markets."
So let me get this straight - snapping at people is not a logical result of having your body cramped up and the inner-lining of one of your internal organs bleeding its way out of your body?
Hmm, well I'd still say no. I don't think anything gives someone a right to take out their anger/bitterness/etc on others. It's for reasons like that that many men beat their wives.
But more to the point, it's not just "snapping at people." Women simply do not make sense during "those" times. Aka, how does uncomfortable cramping/bleeding trigger "you don't love me!"? Short fuse and snapping I could somewhat understand. Random off-the-wall disrailed trains of thought that do nothing but unjustly attack a man's character...that's another story entirely.
Operator overloading is rarely useful and often abused
I've always hated/disagreed with this arrogant stance that is tend to be held by Java programmers only. I find overloading immensely useful, at the very least overriding < and > to allow for sorting operations, and overloading = to call the copy constructor.
I find that the people that complain about operator overloading are the same people that think that a.b.c.get(d).set(e).f.go() is the only sane way to program.
Believe me, THIS:
Mystruct *a,*b;
*a = *b;
improves clarity tenfold over THIS:
Mystruct *a,*b;
b = new Mystruct(&a);
Not to mention THIS:
if (b.getsize().getlongvalue().int() < a.getsize().getlongvalue().int())
is utterly insane compared to THIS:
if (b < a) // or for you picky "what is being compared" ppl
if (b.size < a.size)
Many men, on the other hand, prefer explicit/formal communication and either dismiss these non-verbal cues as unimportant, or (just as likely) are unable to reliably detect them at all
Ha, the irony! I can say the exact same for blatently explicit verbal cues in the case of women. You tell them EXACTLY what you mean/want/need, which they then dismiss as unimportant, politely shelve and go looking for you "really meant." (what you "really meant" can range anywhere from the exact opposite of what you explicitly stated to "i think you're fat")
Show me the emotion that doesn't have a logical cause?
Umm, PMS, Pregnancy, Birth-control side-effects? Pretty much _anything_ to do with female hormones?
I don't know if you count that as a "logical cause", but believe me, anger and a whole host of other emotions frequently erupt "without reason" during these cases and others. In many cases, this is why women end up doing or saying truly moronic things...by acting based on feelings before thinking first. Men rarely ever do this in comparison.
At best they were "deists", which is really a polite way to say "atheists", because deists believe that while a god exists, it does nothing and everything works by natural law just as if no god existed.
We Deists are closer to Agnostics than Atheists actually, though the closest equivalent I believe would be Secular Humanism (w/ a god). We indeed do believe in a God. What sets us apart from other religions is that we don't believe much more than that. We reject almost all organized religions, believing spirituality and morality to exist on a level outside of rituals and dictum.
Deists will likely vary widely from person to person, because of the generality and lack of structure of our beliefs. Some likely draw influences from multiple religions. One thing is for sure though...most Deists are very scientific/rational people. They thrive on reason and skepticism, which is why they often lack "blind faith" that drives most conventional religions. Unlike Atheists, Deists have come to a conclusion that there is a god. Some have reasoned his existence (the compexity argument), others just have a feeling, some may just have hangover remnants from a strict Catholic upbringing (myself perhaps). But for whatever reason, they possess some level of faith outside of pure Atheism.
Some Deists believe God exists, set everything in motion, and now ignores the world. Others believe God is still involved in our lives. Some pray, some don't. As I said before, it is an incredibly open belief system.
Wikipedia says it best though: The classical view of an impersonal and abstract God has caused many to claim that deism is "cold" and amounts to atheism. Deists maintain that the opposite is true and that this view leads to a feeling of awe and reverence based on the fact that personal growth and a constant search for knowledge is required.
To call us Atheists is an affront to our belief system, because nothing is further from the truth. I actually take it rather personally, because I believe Atheism to be just as foolishly arrogant as the zealotry of extremely religious people.
Agnostics at least say, "I don't know if there is a god." Atheists say, "I know and there isn't one." To that I say, "prove it."
Slashdot Mirror
Sad, but true.
We "intelligent, nice, financially stable men" get the privilege of having a girl after she's already been used by a significant portion of the horny, lowliest, creepiest male population out there...ya know, when she's also approaching her more desperate and less desirable "degrading looks" period. And we're supposed to view this in some sort of positive light? Like "sure, she let the scum of the earth have their way with her in her prime for 7+ years, but CHEER UP, you got the discarded remains in the end, right?"
Pardon me if I don't vomit in disgust.
And women wonder why they get treated like objects. After 7 years of THAT kind of treatment at the hands of women, I want to treat them like the objects they deserve to get treated like...after all, it's the life they CHOSE for 7 freakin years.
From the pen of a cynical, bitter, nice guy that has no problems in the confidence, manners, or hygiene department.
Kosovo was NOT a unilateral UN move. Russia was hotly against it and was appalled at the action taken. Germany in turn was concerned at Russia's response.
We are *done* in Kosovo. When Clinton was selling the war to the American people, all the Republican congresspeople and right-wing pundits said this was going to be Clinton's Vietnam, that we were entering a quagmire, etc. etc. Guess what? Situation is peaceful.
It's not hard to have peaceful results when your goals are minimal. We didn't even send in troops. Fact of the matter is that Kosovo was strategically and economically unimportant, and the action taken was an inconsequential exercise of military effort. Clinton's touted "reason" for taking action was "humanitarian reasons". If this be the case, any number of other countries could be seen as similar targets. Why did he not go into any of them as well? Are they not similar arguments you see posted against Bush these days? (ala, "Why Iraq? Why not Country X?")
Read up on some 1999 public opinion of Clinton's military excursions here and here
The parallels are incredibly amusing. So much that people bitch about Bush about today they were bitching about Clinton back in 1999. There were virtually identical claims way back in 1999 that Kosovo would see a dramatic decline in European confidence in American leadership due to international outcry about the bombings.
We have had no combat fatalities in Kosovo. We are done and the war is over. Service people have died, but not because of enemy combatants and insurgents
True, but you're trying to compare a ground war + 3 year occupation to a FOUR MONTH PERIOD in which no ground force was present and our only intervention involved bomb dropping, much of which was done in unmanned vehicles. Kosovo wasn't a war, it was a skirmish.
Clinton never lied to the American people
Some would argue he was just a better liar. That's why people never recognized him as such.
Bush's team had absolutely no plan for reconstructing Iraq, and they have no plan to this day
Anything to back up this claim with?
2000+ soldiers have died, and there is no end in sight. The violence it getting worse, not better. The military is stretched to their limits. This cannot continue without instituting a draft
Say what? Now you're just trying to be sensationalistic.
1737 combat deaths so far (not 2000+), since that's the yardstick you're using with Clinton.
No end in sight? Every day, more Iraqi security forces are trained. For every Iraqi squadron that can be deployed effectively, a U.S. squadron can be pulled back. Some reports are here or here.
And of COURSE the military "can continue" without a draft. They're still fighting over there now, right? That's "continuing." Now, whether or not we could fight _another_ war is a different story, though I'm pretty sure we still could without a draft. But it wouldn't be pleasant on the economy. You act as if Iraq is a growing effort instead of the resource sink it actually is. The current alotment of soldiers we have there now is the MAX we will have there. If the numbers will go anywhere, they will go DOWN. There's already talk of limited pullout.
FDR packed the supreme court and installed himself for an unprecedented 3rd time. Talk about abuse of power. But, he got us in a good position to win WWII, and his New Deal programs modernized the US, so that now America is a modern industrial country
Yeah that's a great product I use every day... wait I've never heard of it before. I thought we learnt not to produce products before the standards are finalised from the last Wi-Fi fiasco...
Man, don't diss something with real world results. I own the thing. The results and benchmarks are not bullshit. I used to own a 54G router (which sits in the basement where the cable comes in), and my wireless signal would barely flicker red (sometimes losing connectivity altogether) up in my second story bedroom.
With the Pre-N, I have a full 100% green bar and 108 Mpbs throughput.
Just because something isn't mainstream yet doesn't diminish it's greatest. Google was awesome WAY before it became a household name. Similar things can be said for Firefox and any number of any other products, such as Trillian/Miranda. Just because YOU haven't heard of it doesn't mean it isn't a great product. Hell, I'd argue most mainstream stuff borders on crap actually.
Red herring? Not a real health risk? You must be joking
What of the blackened lungs full of tar that show proof positive evidence of cigarette health risks?
I don't see hundreds of people suffering from lung cancer from living among cars all their life.
I mean, we don't exactly lock ourselves in small, enclosed, poorly ventilated areas with running CARS (unless we're committing suicide)
But you go to any club or bar, and you can practically _see_ the smoke all around you.
Enclosures matter in relation to localized public health. If you only want to think long term, fine...general pollution (aka dumping things into the atmosphere) is a nasty health risk in itself. But you can't claim that public smoking is somehow a red herring, when in fact it is very real.
The new Onion format SUCKS.
We just need a phone for emergency situations so paying this much money for an emergency phone is pretty ridiculous. No plan even offers a low-cost plan
Incorrect, sir.
There most certainly are options, especially for people in your situation (emergency only phone use). The answer lies in pre-paid cell phone plans, such as Liberty Wireless who offer low premium, no-frills, no-contract plans as low as $30/month. These are ideal for those who only use the phone infrequently or only in emergencies. You can cancel the plan at any time without any penalty, and payment method is identical to non-prepaid (monthly fee). There are other pre-paid carriers around as well, some of whom have even lower rates (I saw one for $20/month somewhere I remember). Even some of the big names such as Cingular are beginning to offer pre-paid plans due to growing popularity.
They're not for everybody, but in your situation, I think it's what you want.
I hope they were smart enough to include a DELETE button.
That's one up on Gmail already.
You're lumping Eve 6 into the 90s one-hit wonders category? That's nuts...their entire debut album was great (As well as their subsequent ones). Hell, even Semisonic is a stretch to fit that category...most of their first album was decent too (singing in my sleep, completely pleased, this will be my year). I'll definitely give ya the Verve tho. And I'd call Fastball a two-hit wonder. They had Fire Escape too.
While I mostly agree with your post, I offer a second alternative. Instead of squeezing as many back-to-back patients in possible into a day's schedule, at the cost of a PATIENT's time and money when appointments run over...how about leaving a buffer between appointments and simply not scheduling as many people? Since doctors REGULARLY have patients w/ appointments waiting upwards of an hour, I would see this as a reasonable thing to do.
However, that would require the doctor voluntarily losing money to make the patient's experience more convenient. Why do that when you can just steal their time instead?
And THIS maam, is precisely why you (and most of your species) are entirely offbase. You seem to think that simply because men value physical beauty that we are entirely ignorant of anything more. It's WOMEN, not men, that perpetuate this ludicrous stereotype. My last girlfriend had no chest at all (34A). I appreciated her more for her intelligence, her humor, and her cuteness. Yet I also appreciate big boobs on other women and in video games. You find a problem with this?
On a side note, should I be offended when I see video games with muscular men? (which is pretty much any male video game hero). How bout the comments about Vin Diesel or whoever the "hot-throb of the month" is? You act as if this "physical appreciation" is a gender specific trait, when in fact it happens in both directions and we just aren't as stuck up about it. Tell ya what, when women are flocking to the nice skinny geeks in glasses instead of swooning over the assholes with muscles, then you can talk about one-sided physical focus.
Call it misogynistic if you'd like. I just hate ignorance and hypocrisy. And since we're all generalizing here, your gender is full of it.
Because I believe that Ocarina of Time too completely changed the core concept. There was always a serious "tone" to Zelda, all the way up thru SNES's "A Link to the Past". It wasn't until N64 got ahold of it with Majora's Mask that it started going downhill. That was a MAJOR core concept change, not to mention a shift towards more childish graphics and light heartedness. By the time it got around to Gamecube, the core concept was already long past shat on.
Play the original Legend of Zelda, Link 2, and SNES Link to the Past. Then compare that to Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker. You should immediately be able to spot the difference in core concept, mood, and plot. Hell, even the original Legend of Zelda music sounded badass. The main score was very heroic and adventurous. Most of the other music was eerie or intense.
He wasn't THAT cartoonish. I mean, come on, he was Nintendo, so of course there was a little cartoon in him.
But there's a HUGE leap between cel-shaded link and original link. I mean hell, look at the original Legend of Zelda box. It was gold with a fairly badass looking shield on it. It wasn't colored in pastels and flowers and goofy looking animals and other ridiculousness.
Similar with Zelda 2...badass looking sword on a gold box.
Then, fast forward to this ludicrousness.
We go from "teen" cartoony to 5-year old cartoony
Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against cel-shading. Frankly, I think it looks rather slick. But it ticks me off that they did it to Link. He looked teen-ish in early Zelda. But then they made him look like he was still in diapers.
You sir have completely missed the point.
Why do painters/sketchartisists paint or draw still-life when they can just scribble between the lines with some crayons...it's fun, right?
Why do people play chess when they could just play checkers? Still fun, right?
Why watch a game of football on TV when you can just watch the cartoon network 24/7? It's fun after all.
Let me ask you this...do you still face-paint? bob for apples? go trick-or-treating? giggle and gossip? have pillow fights? I'm sure there is tons of shit that is "still fun" that you don't do simply because you grew out of it or found more "adult" activity to replace it with...be it mountain climbing or kayaking or sex or what-have-you.
This isn't a matter of simple maturity and fear of being laughed at. It is _less fun_ to play games when the style is aesthetically offensive to you.
This is an argument over whether the game is fun, and whether it could be MORE fun if casted realistically. Christ, would you enjoy a game like Grand Turismo 4 if all the cars and courses and base concept were the same, but it was cel-shaded and cartoony? How bout NFL 2k6? kill.zone?
Cartoons and cartoonyness has its place. Games like Mario Party and Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers are irresistably fun. However, a game like Zelda _suffers_ from excessive cartoonyness in the same way a game like Metroid or Starfox would if it were casted in the same light. These are action games with semi-badass characters. We aren't looking for Call of Duty type style here. We're looking for what we've come to know and love. If Metroid, give me an experience equivalent to what I once knew as Metroid (and for the most part, they did). The same goes for Zelda.
The one who plays both. And can realize a good game from a bad game.
The cartoony cel-shaded Link really was a crime though. Very much like Final Fantasy online was a crime. You don't take a well-loved, well-established game with a deeply entrenched fan base and COMPLETELY CHANGE the core concept, but keep the name.
I didn't even require a "realistic" adult-looking link. I just wanted a "maturity level" on par with the originals. The cartoony Link was FAR from "on par" when compared to the classic Zelda.
That's one of the most assinine things I've ever heard, typical of trollish Slashdot anti-bush spoutings. You act as if Bush was sitting there with his finger on the button, purposely stalling recovery efforts.
Listen up...it is NOT the President's job to spearhead disaster recovery efforts. We have an existing infrastructure to do just that...FEMA, and to a lesser extent charitable organizations like the Red Cross. If you want to acuse anyone of impotence in the face of disaster, place the blame squarely where it belongs. Namely, FIRSTLY on the New Orleans mayor and state govt for failing to adequately prepare or get people out themselves. SECONDLY, on organizations meant to deal with this.
Following a lag in the infrastructure, Bush promptly addressed the issue. What more can you ask for?
and when Europe initially offered the US help, they were turned down - why?
Any number of reasons...who are you to know all? Maybe more organizations would simply add more confusion and disorganization to a situation that is ALREADY a major communications blunder. Maybe it's a national security issue. Maybe we simply don't need the resources. Who knows? I certainly don't. Do you? I do know that no one passes up a free lunch for no reason, so obviously the govt MUST have their reasons.
Give them time.
Don't you see it? At first Google was just competing with web search (MSN competition). Then they moved into email space (Hotmail competition). Then they moved into the Desktop search space (Vista compeition). Now they're moving into IM space (more MSN competition). And unlike many other companies, they're INTEGRATING all their stuff together, just the way Microsoft does. Not only are they expanding their turf, but they're doing the job RIGHT. They're releasing damn good products everytime, and they're being recognized for it.
Microsoft has good reason to be scared shitless of Google. Not only does Google have all the real talent (Phds and smart geeks) in this day and age, but they have a wallet large enough to do something with that talent, and the public opinion to net a vast flock of users. On top of that, they're expanding like crazy. It seems like every other week they're releasing some new product, branching in some other direction. Personally, I believe it's only a matter of time before they release a whole OS. Though I think a Google browser is the next logical step.
I don't think you give Google enough credit. They're innovating and expanding at a rapid pace. Most search engine companies would sit on their laurels and "just do the job" if they released a search engine as good as Google's. 5 years ago, could you have imagined Google releasing an email client, or a desktop search program? Or let me put it in a way that isn't biased by current day thought. Could you imagine Infoseek or Webcrawler or Excite or Altavista doing the same? There's plenty of examples of web search companies that "did their one thing." Google is not one of them. They don't see "a market". They see "markets."
Oh, then hehe :)
Hmm, well I'd still say no. I don't think anything gives someone a right to take out their anger/bitterness/etc on others. It's for reasons like that that many men beat their wives.
But more to the point, it's not just "snapping at people." Women simply do not make sense during "those" times. Aka, how does uncomfortable cramping/bleeding trigger "you don't love me!"? Short fuse and snapping I could somewhat understand. Random off-the-wall disrailed trains of thought that do nothing but unjustly attack a man's character...that's another story entirely.
I've always hated/disagreed with this arrogant stance that is tend to be held by Java programmers only. I find overloading immensely useful, at the very least overriding < and > to allow for sorting operations, and overloading = to call the copy constructor.
I find that the people that complain about operator overloading are the same people that think that a.b.c.get(d).set(e).f.go() is the only sane way to program.
Believe me, THIS:
Mystruct *a,*b;
*a = *b;
improves clarity tenfold over THIS:
Mystruct *a,*b;
b = new Mystruct(&a);
Not to mention THIS:
if (b.getsize().getlongvalue().int() < a.getsize().getlongvalue().int())
is utterly insane compared to THIS:
if (b < a)
// or for you picky "what is being compared" ppl
if (b.size < a.size)
Extreme OO is a plague on modern day programming.
Ha, the irony!
I can say the exact same for blatently explicit verbal cues in the case of women.
You tell them EXACTLY what you mean/want/need, which they then dismiss as unimportant, politely shelve and go looking for you "really meant." (what you "really meant" can range anywhere from the exact opposite of what you explicitly stated to "i think you're fat")
Umm, PMS, Pregnancy, Birth-control side-effects? Pretty much _anything_ to do with female hormones?
I don't know if you count that as a "logical cause", but believe me, anger and a whole host of other emotions frequently erupt "without reason" during these cases and others. In many cases, this is why women end up doing or saying truly moronic things...by acting based on feelings before thinking first. Men rarely ever do this in comparison.
"It's not ironic! It's just coincidental!" - Bender
Incorrect, sir.
Look it up.
We Deists are closer to Agnostics than Atheists actually, though the closest equivalent I believe would be Secular Humanism (w/ a god). We indeed do believe in a God. What sets us apart from other religions is that we don't believe much more than that. We reject almost all organized religions, believing spirituality and morality to exist on a level outside of rituals and dictum.
Deists will likely vary widely from person to person, because of the generality and lack of structure of our beliefs. Some likely draw influences from multiple religions. One thing is for sure though...most Deists are very scientific/rational people. They thrive on reason and skepticism, which is why they often lack "blind faith" that drives most conventional religions. Unlike Atheists, Deists have come to a conclusion that there is a god. Some have reasoned his existence (the compexity argument), others just have a feeling, some may just have hangover remnants from a strict Catholic upbringing (myself perhaps). But for whatever reason, they possess some level of faith outside of pure Atheism.
Some Deists believe God exists, set everything in motion, and now ignores the world.
Others believe God is still involved in our lives.
Some pray, some don't.
As I said before, it is an incredibly open belief system.
Wikipedia says it best though: The classical view of an impersonal and abstract God has caused many to claim that deism is "cold" and amounts to atheism. Deists maintain that the opposite is true and that this view leads to a feeling of awe and reverence based on the fact that personal growth and a constant search for knowledge is required.
To call us Atheists is an affront to our belief system, because nothing is further from the truth.
I actually take it rather personally, because I believe Atheism to be just as foolishly arrogant as the zealotry of extremely religious people.
Agnostics at least say, "I don't know if there is a god."
Atheists say, "I know and there isn't one."
To that I say, "prove it."
Games should be mythical and nonexistant?
Hell with that. I'm singing the Golden Grahams song :)