Good luck getting T/W to acknowledge you have a problem that isn't somehow your fault. TW has been great when I want equipment replaced. No questions asked, no intense interrogation. Just "I think it's broke because of X", over the phone to see if they have any other suggestions, and then a quick swap.
Is Microsoft involved in this at all? If it is, then I am worried. If Microsoft isn't involved at all, then it will fail. That's what "monopoly" means.
In the event of a strong selectivity pressure, the rich would have a huge advantage over the poor. Generally, a rich family is poor again within five generations. What's your point?
When people say temperature decreases are part of global warming it is a cop out for global warming proponents who really don't know what is going on which makes them right no matter what happens. Convenient isn't it? Scary. Not convenient.
The "Climate Crisis" interpretation is that, due to the sudden rise of atmospheric carbon, we're in danger of not just a few degrees of warmth or sea level jumping a hundred feet, but a cascading series of feedback loops that will render Earth wholly uninhabitable.
We know the temperature is going up. We know that carbon in the air is going up. We know that we're tossing an awful lot of carbon into the air We can see a clear correlation between temperature and carbon going back a few thousand years.
Don't YOU think that's enough to, I don't know, stop tossing carbon into the air and see what happens? If it turns out to do nothing, we can just let you burn dinosaurs again. I know I'd rather lose my next paycheck than die.
If Sanderson is that good at wrapping things up, maybe George R.R. Martin can pass along his notes for A Song of Ice and Fire and then just move on to something else... You mistakenly think that Martin cares about telling a good story. He's a hack, with respect neither for his characters nor his readers.
I was engrossed right up until the "red wedding" -- when a minor character brutally murdered a central pillar, despite foreshadowing that he would live. It was badly written, badly plotted crap, and any author that would inflict something that mirage-breaking doesn't deserve his royalties.
I'm a fan of low fantasy, so the minute it spiraled up into "killing Gods" territory, which is what I call it, I instantly lost interest. The story STARTS with a "god" blowing up a mountain, and you learn by the end of the very first book that Rand is the reincarnation of said "god."
If it took you to book 4 to learn that WoT is a high-magic fantasy, you weren't paying attention.
Every time I install XP these days, the screens during the initial install phase crack me up. They proclaim it to be the most secure Microsoft OS product to date, etc. I wonder if a class action lawsuit could be raised to take them to task for making these bogus statements about their product... No, not at all.
The statements a coached as relative -- "Microsoft" operating system, "to date", etc. To find something more secure than XP on the day XP was released, you need to find something that needs an addition to do what XP does out of the box.
And even if it could be shown that they're literally false, those are clearly conched as "fluffing" statements, and have no more requirement for literal truth than a salesperson saying "this is the best deal ever."
who is going to pay to take care of the waste for the next 100,000 years? No human institution has ever lasted that long and yet we build reactors that can only work for 40 years or so but have this waste that is hot and nasty for at least 100,000. No, it isn't. If it were HOT and nasty, we could just stick it in a box, heat water, and use the power.
We have a boat-load of stuff that is "bad for you to hand around with", and will be that way for thousands of years. And we have even more "don't use this if the paint falls off" stuff. And a very little ammount of "touch this and die."
Most of the last is or can be used as a fuel, somewhere. The rest is, on a planetary scale, useless.
Not every child is a direct clone of his/her parents I know exactly zero people who are direct clones of their parents. Everyone I know has a significantly different niche in life than their parents or their siblings. Every. Single. Person.
At best, there is some overlap of relatively minor traditions: military service, initial appreciating of education, and so on. But to a greater or lesser degree, every human child looks at their parents, sees something they don't like, and says "I won't do that." And then they do something else, entirely, and their children repeat the cycle.
Nobody in Western countries has to work multiple jobs unless they are doing something seriously wrong You're a student, and someone who occludes "veteran" and "conscientious objector."
To put it plainly, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Not having well-off parents to foot the bill for college to give you a unique skill-set is not "something seriously wrong." A good portion of any country lives in poverty, and if you're not a member of a welfare state, when you hit rock bottom you really do need to go work full time just to survive.
Note that most folk who work multiple jobs don't have a single full-time job. They may average 50-60 hours per week among their 2-5 jobs, but since none of their jobs pay benefits and they have higher-than-ordinary travel expenses, they need to work that much just to survive.
the vast majority of humanity lacks the simple survival skills... ready obedience.... Obedience to accepted authority IS a survival skill. If a tribe of hunter-gatherers (or worse, farmers) argues every decision, they starve.
Your larger point -- fools deserve to be parted from their money -- is economically true. These people are idiots -- but the human race needs idiots, because sometimes figuratively watching grass grow really is important for the survival of the tribe.
Quantum physics makes a great deal of sense in the only way that physical theories can: it explains our observations, to an uncanny level. Which is why it's held as something that doesn't make sense -- because undergrads take a QM course, realize that it doesn't make sense from an absolute perspective, and decide that it's supposed to be that crazy.
Its like the act of procreation and creating life is taboo, but the act of ending life isn't Pretty much -- so long as you add in the key phrase "discussion of."
We as a society don't want to see your sex life. We have our own, and we're quite happy with it -- more so when we don't have to internally compare ours with yours.
Violence, on the other hand, can never be out of the public forum. If you shoot someone, society DEMANDS that you say why.
Because there is little difference between her policies and Republican policies. Bull SHIT.
The Republican policy is "Screw the poor, gays should be hung, we don't need fiscal responsibility, let's invade Iran."
Hillary Clinton is moderate in her rebuke, but she's against the Republicans on every issue I listed. Care to name one issue -- just one -- where Hillary is closer to the Republicans than to her base of moderate Democrats?
If not for Nintendo's amazing understanding of their audience the WII would not be able to compete, graphically, computationally its inferior, but that doesn't matter, its fun. Graphics or "amazing understanding" have nothing to do with it; the Wii succeeds because of the controller. Even with the craptacular ports, there are enough good wii-mote games that it's worth the purchase price.
and yeah, I own a PS3; when I find a WII in stock I suspect I will own one of those as well, the only thing on the 360 that I find attractive is the Halo franchise but it isn't enough to make me drop coin. What the hell have you found on the PS3 that's worth the system + game purchase price? Right now, even if the systems and the games were equal in price, I couldn't see a point to buy a PS3 instead of a 360 or a Wii.
I don't buy it. I'm sorry, but they introduce nothing plausible that would justify that, and yea, sure, it's fiction, but even fiction has to be internally consistent. That's just it -- it is. Star Wars is a science-fantasy where you can pop across the galaxy in a week. where "repulsors" are so cheap and reliable that no one uses wheels anymore, where the speed of light means nothing, tiny space fighters work just as well in atmosphere (and never need heat shielding), and anything that looks vaugely like a spaceship can land, fly, and do pretty much whatever it wants.
And in this universe, of all things to complain about, you're bitching that a military vessel can't have enough layers of redundancy to limp home after being half destroyed?
The very first time you heard an X-wing "swoosh" should have told you all you need to know about Star Wars: physics takes a back seat to moviemaking, and the crash landing you're complaining about is entirely consistant with that.
The movie fricking starts with them landing half a fricking starship on a landing strip, rather than, you know, in a giant self-made crater. I know it's sci-fi, but come on. I'd have bought one of them levitating them to the ground using the Force (which doesn't make a ton of sense), but not a fricking crash landing. these ships fly around in space, at faster than light travel -- AFTER they've already been shot full of holes. And the "fighters" bank, for crying out loud!
A "starship" being able to have an effective emergency landing is every bit as plausible as the starship in the first place.
I have rarely if ever seen an EULA for console games. Does Halo 3 even present one?
I think an EULA on a video game would be even worse than an EULA on software. On the latter, you need to make a copy of it for the thing to work at all. For a video game, you never make a copy at all, and require the physical copy the publisher gave you.
and there are very few *thinking* people who are not afraid of the Patriot Act. You, sir, are an idiot and a snob.
There are all kinds of intelligent people who are not afraid of the Patriot Act. There are lawyers who read it and don't see the same problems that the "blogosphere" (for lack of a better term) sees. There are US Attorneys -- smart people, by the nature of their job -- who wouldn't be afraid of it even if the blogosphere were correct. And, there are even people who are willing to let the FBI and the CIA and their local library all talk to each other, because they don't equate privacy with either security or liberty. Heck, there are even people who think the blogosphere is correct, and yet think there are far worse things in the world today, and so aren't all that afriad of it.
These people may all be entirely wrong. There are parts of the Patriot Act that are too far and need to be repealed. But that doesn't mean those who aren't they're not thinking, and you insult them and marginalize yourself when you claim so.
Only two real factors will bring about nukes...either the natural supply and price of coal... No one pays the full natural price of coal. Which is exactly what carbon credits are all about. Screw cap-and-trade; just require all power plants to pay for the full-spectrum pollution of their product.
Let's not even get started about the full natural cost of oil, shall we?
I'd rather they go home so we can export the jobs that are exportable to them in their country rather than taking over the non-exportable jobs here at lower wages. Farmhand.
Toilet cleaner.
laborer for a construction sub-contractor.
Exactly how many Americans do you know that either really want to work in one of those three jobs, or would be willing to pay $100/day for them?
Unlimited migration (NOT immigration -- these people don't want to be citizens!) is a fundamental part of a free market. If the entire population of Mexico wants to come and do low-level service jobs in the United States, they should just need to tell the Departments of State & Homeland Security and the IRS.
So they aren't going to pay for insurance, no matter what the cost. Psst. Illegal Immigrants buy food, pay for gas, and as often as not pay someone for the roof over their head.
Plus, even if only one illegal immigrant diver in a hundred buys insurance, that's still infinitly more than the number of insured illegals you'd have now.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you might really do have a problem.
The "Climate Crisis" interpretation is that, due to the sudden rise of atmospheric carbon, we're in danger of not just a few degrees of warmth or sea level jumping a hundred feet, but a cascading series of feedback loops that will render Earth wholly uninhabitable.
We know the temperature is going up. We know that carbon in the air is going up. We know that we're tossing an awful lot of carbon into the air We can see a clear correlation between temperature and carbon going back a few thousand years.
Don't YOU think that's enough to, I don't know, stop tossing carbon into the air and see what happens? If it turns out to do nothing, we can just let you burn dinosaurs again. I know I'd rather lose my next paycheck than die.
I was engrossed right up until the "red wedding" -- when a minor character brutally murdered a central pillar, despite foreshadowing that he would live. It was badly written, badly plotted crap, and any author that would inflict something that mirage-breaking doesn't deserve his royalties.
If it took you to book 4 to learn that WoT is a high-magic fantasy, you weren't paying attention.
The statements a coached as relative -- "Microsoft" operating system, "to date", etc. To find something more secure than XP on the day XP was released, you need to find something that needs an addition to do what XP does out of the box.
And even if it could be shown that they're literally false, those are clearly conched as "fluffing" statements, and have no more requirement for literal truth than a salesperson saying "this is the best deal ever."
We have a boat-load of stuff that is "bad for you to hand around with", and will be that way for thousands of years. And we have even more "don't use this if the paint falls off" stuff. And a very little ammount of "touch this and die."
Most of the last is or can be used as a fuel, somewhere. The rest is, on a planetary scale, useless.
2: No, it hasn't.
3: Doesn't matter. There are other radioactive materials that can be used for fission.
At best, there is some overlap of relatively minor traditions: military service, initial appreciating of education, and so on. But to a greater or lesser degree, every human child looks at their parents, sees something they don't like, and says "I won't do that." And then they do something else, entirely, and their children repeat the cycle.
To put it plainly, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Not having well-off parents to foot the bill for college to give you a unique skill-set is not "something seriously wrong." A good portion of any country lives in poverty, and if you're not a member of a welfare state, when you hit rock bottom you really do need to go work full time just to survive.
Note that most folk who work multiple jobs don't have a single full-time job. They may average 50-60 hours per week among their 2-5 jobs, but since none of their jobs pay benefits and they have higher-than-ordinary travel expenses, they need to work that much just to survive.
Your larger point -- fools deserve to be parted from their money -- is economically true. These people are idiots -- but the human race needs idiots, because sometimes figuratively watching grass grow really is important for the survival of the tribe.
We as a society don't want to see your sex life. We have our own, and we're quite happy with it -- more so when we don't have to internally compare ours with yours.
Violence, on the other hand, can never be out of the public forum. If you shoot someone, society DEMANDS that you say why.
The Republican policy is "Screw the poor, gays should be hung, we don't need fiscal responsibility, let's invade Iran."
Hillary Clinton is moderate in her rebuke, but she's against the Republicans on every issue I listed. Care to name one issue -- just one -- where Hillary is closer to the Republicans than to her base of moderate Democrats?
And in this universe, of all things to complain about, you're bitching that a military vessel can't have enough layers of redundancy to limp home after being half destroyed?
The very first time you heard an X-wing "swoosh" should have told you all you need to know about Star Wars: physics takes a back seat to moviemaking, and the crash landing you're complaining about is entirely consistant with that.
A "starship" being able to have an effective emergency landing is every bit as plausible as the starship in the first place.
I have rarely if ever seen an EULA for console games. Does Halo 3 even present one?
I think an EULA on a video game would be even worse than an EULA on software. On the latter, you need to make a copy of it for the thing to work at all. For a video game, you never make a copy at all, and require the physical copy the publisher gave you.
There are all kinds of intelligent people who are not afraid of the Patriot Act. There are lawyers who read it and don't see the same problems that the "blogosphere" (for lack of a better term) sees. There are US Attorneys -- smart people, by the nature of their job -- who wouldn't be afraid of it even if the blogosphere were correct. And, there are even people who are willing to let the FBI and the CIA and their local library all talk to each other, because they don't equate privacy with either security or liberty. Heck, there are even people who think the blogosphere is correct, and yet think there are far worse things in the world today, and so aren't all that afriad of it.
These people may all be entirely wrong. There are parts of the Patriot Act that are too far and need to be repealed. But that doesn't mean those who aren't they're not thinking, and you insult them and marginalize yourself when you claim so.
Let's not even get started about the full natural cost of oil, shall we?
Toilet cleaner.
laborer for a construction sub-contractor.
Exactly how many Americans do you know that either really want to work in one of those three jobs, or would be willing to pay $100/day for them?
Unlimited migration (NOT immigration -- these people don't want to be citizens!) is a fundamental part of a free market. If the entire population of Mexico wants to come and do low-level service jobs in the United States, they should just need to tell the Departments of State & Homeland Security and the IRS.
Plus, even if only one illegal immigrant diver in a hundred buys insurance, that's still infinitly more than the number of insured illegals you'd have now.