We are a nation of Law and Democracy. Corporatism is neither lawful nor democratic, as it is an engine with the extremely effecient wheels of chaos and the limitless engine of greed.
We would be fools to ban Corporatism, but bigger fools still to let it lead us to anarchy and feudalism.
That applies to ALL life. Deer don't magically say "hey, we've got 1/10th the biomass of our food as deer, that's enough babies." They either starve or get eaten by wolves--who, again, don't say "hey, there are ten times as many deer as us; let's stop having cubs for a bit."
Man is different from other forms of life only in that we have successfully broken the cycle of nature and evolution. We have no predators, we have the ability to rape the planet to end hunger, and the reason we don't use due to our own artifical economic systems, rather than an intelligent choice to limit our population.
Speaking as a software designer, where's the error handling?
Speaking as a real person, "in the system."
Complexity is good when you know your instructions will all be followed. When your instructions must be understood and then applied by a sentient being, the simpler the better.
They devised a solution to a problem that still exists today: Ensuring that large populations do not dicate law to smaller populations.
And that problem's solution was the Senate and Seperation of Powers. The electoral college was a fix to the then-not-now problem of actually counting votes from a country with more landmass than half of Europe.
Remember that the United States is NOT a Democracy, but a Federal Republic.
While the USA may not technically be a democracy, we were concieved as a federation of inter-related democracies that would best keep to democratic principles. Given the advances in technology and the preemmince of the federal office, it is indeed prudent to shift the election of our primary executive to a direct, rather than indirect, election.
Local federal affairs are best taken care of by members of the House, statewide federal affairs best championed by Senators, and national federal affairs should be the providence of the President.
Spitzer's an effective Attorney General who, politically, has realized that the best way to get a favorable opinion of himself is to do his job.
This doesn't work for every position -- most governors and the President, of course, have to mix so many different sides with no clear winner that they inevitably have to spend at least some time politicking.
OTOH, being honest, doing your job, and erring on the side of the little guy is a good enough forumla to win popular acclaim.
I'm sorry but TSR jumped the shark with Ravenloft, not to mention Spell Jamming.
TSR jumped the shark with 2nd edition. Not "During", "with". Which is why when WotC sent Ryan Dancy to check out if they could be bought, he found a warehouse full of unsold 1st edition material.
TSR was bought out because, quite frankly, they didn't know what they were doing. WotC took D&D and made it what it always had been at the core--a rather campy hack & slash system with rules clear enough to be stretched to tell good stories.
Age: As government, whatever the form, exists, it inevitably becomes the victim of institutionalized corruption. Most of the anti-democratic parts of the USA's federal government are inherited aspects that date back to the cold war, if not longer. (Some of them, like the US Bank / Treasury, date back even farther.)
Size: Quite simply, the larger you are, the more power you have, and the harder it is for a single-viewing populace to identify corruption. It's easy to have a town hall that's not corrupt; but the governmetn of some 300 million people?
Now, that said, our democracy really isn't in that sorry of a state. We're on a bit of an angry spike, but we've had these ups and downs before. Like I said, Democracy doesn't prevent corruption; it just makes corruption manageable.
That's actually how democracy works. Lots of special interests, with a population-based pull jointy steering the country along a path that we can all agree on.
You'll see the country working even better come January, when Kerry takes over Executive power without a shot being fired.
This would mean that every document printed would have a traceable signature; the protest letter you sent to congress, the art project you made with your kids, the protest flyer you posted on campus--everything.
If your speach requires you to be untraceable, then by and large you've already lost.
Go to your local High School and find someone to help you write the conversation in French, and then have that person read it into a tape. Then write down what you hear, phonetically.
Yes. As much as it is to change the minds of the thousand people I pass every day.
A small person with sufficient budget can keep the governmet honest--see Ralph Nader for a great example. That same small person with the same small budget can not change everyone's mind--see Ralph Nader for a great example.
I need not give you a store just something better. VISA, MASTERCARD, AMEX, DINNERS, DISCOVER, SEARS.....etc etc etc etc...
Those don't fit the description. They're a seperate service that pays for things for you and then comes after you for the money.
Unfortunately you always sign a slip. If it's not on the site it's with UPS, FEDEX or whoever delivers the merchandise to your door. If you did not sign for it then you do not have to pay. One click is the plastic card the legal obligation to pay is still your signature.
Wrong. I mean, dead wrong. If UPS just leaves the Amazon package at your door, and you pick it up & take it inside, you still legally have to provide the funds to Amazon.
Please explain why the effort to blend in--which would include convincing thousands if not millions of people to conform--is not better spent just making the government honest.
Kindly point me to a nationwide store, in the USA, where I can give them my payment information once and then never even have to sign a slip ever again. Usage of a directory and ID to look up who I am, or a membership card, is acceptable--but having to go back to the very same person isn't.
skewing the tax code to favour the welathy and bankrupt the treasury is not excusable.
It's impossible to bankrupt the treasury. If, to pick a wild example, we elected a bunch of debt-hating communists, the federal government could simply print money to fulfill literal-value of past debt and then change the currency to a new standard.
Sure, it'd wreck the economy of the entire world--but the US Gov't could do it relatively easily.
Re:Why I dislike Halo (and all modern console game
on
Halo 2 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1
You really, honestly can't be farther from the truth. In those rare instances where two joysticks are used, they work VERY well. Halo's the best example, but there are a few others. Mouselooking is better than a keyboard or most Atari-style PC joysticks, but for most games it's just not as intuitive as a joystick.
As for the lure of console games: When I play a PC game, I have to wonder "am I playing the game that I paid money for, or a buggy example thereof"?
By and by, you are missing one other very important thing about modern controllers. The games were designed to use them. From Rogue Squadron to Halo, the current console generation set a new standard on how to design games to use everything you know the player's going to see and feel.
If the equivalent of one full-time six-figure person spends three MORE days configuring redundant desktops instead of redundant servers, either it's a horribly big network for that one person (if each replacement takes two hours--which is a lot--that's twelves replacements per year!) or they're incompetent.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is Bungie not letting dedicated fans play Halo2 before launch?
Actual answer:
Because dedicated fans don't have a high marketing value.
Better answer: They do. They're called Bungie Employees.
Very well said.
We are a nation of Law and Democracy. Corporatism is neither lawful nor democratic, as it is an engine with the extremely effecient wheels of chaos and the limitless engine of greed.
We would be fools to ban Corporatism, but bigger fools still to let it lead us to anarchy and feudalism.
Regardless of your opinions of those groups, you have to agree that no conservative foundation would ever be likely to donate money to them.
Well, I don't *have* to agree, but I'll coneede the point.
And in counter, a NON-BIASED foundation might donate to them.
That applies to ALL life. Deer don't magically say "hey, we've got 1/10th the biomass of our food as deer, that's enough babies." They either starve or get eaten by wolves--who, again, don't say "hey, there are ten times as many deer as us; let's stop having cubs for a bit."
Man is different from other forms of life only in that we have successfully broken the cycle of nature and evolution. We have no predators, we have the ability to rape the planet to end hunger, and the reason we don't use due to our own artifical economic systems, rather than an intelligent choice to limit our population.
Speaking as a software designer, where's the error handling?
Speaking as a real person, "in the system."
Complexity is good when you know your instructions will all be followed. When your instructions must be understood and then applied by a sentient being, the simpler the better.
They devised a solution to a problem that still exists today: Ensuring that large populations do not dicate law to smaller populations.
And that problem's solution was the Senate and Seperation of Powers. The electoral college was a fix to the then-not-now problem of actually counting votes from a country with more landmass than half of Europe.
Remember that the United States is NOT a Democracy, but a Federal Republic.
While the USA may not technically be a democracy, we were concieved as a federation of inter-related democracies that would best keep to democratic principles. Given the advances in technology and the preemmince of the federal office, it is indeed prudent to shift the election of our primary executive to a direct, rather than indirect, election.
Local federal affairs are best taken care of by members of the House, statewide federal affairs best championed by Senators, and national federal affairs should be the providence of the President.
Spitzer's an effective Attorney General who, politically, has realized that the best way to get a favorable opinion of himself is to do his job.
This doesn't work for every position -- most governors and the President, of course, have to mix so many different sides with no clear winner that they inevitably have to spend at least some time politicking.
OTOH, being honest, doing your job, and erring on the side of the little guy is a good enough forumla to win popular acclaim.
Dr. King's death is the ultimate rebuttal to his words as you quoted them.
Unless, of course, you consider his assassin a man of good will.
I'm sorry but TSR jumped the shark with Ravenloft, not to mention Spell Jamming.
TSR jumped the shark with 2nd edition. Not "During", "with". Which is why when WotC sent Ryan Dancy to check out if they could be bought, he found a warehouse full of unsold 1st edition material.
TSR was bought out because, quite frankly, they didn't know what they were doing. WotC took D&D and made it what it always had been at the core--a rather campy hack & slash system with rules clear enough to be stretched to tell good stories.
I'll spell it out for you.
Age: As government, whatever the form, exists, it inevitably becomes the victim of institutionalized corruption. Most of the anti-democratic parts of the USA's federal government are inherited aspects that date back to the cold war, if not longer. (Some of them, like the US Bank / Treasury, date back even farther.)
Size: Quite simply, the larger you are, the more power you have, and the harder it is for a single-viewing populace to identify corruption. It's easy to have a town hall that's not corrupt; but the governmetn of some 300 million people?
Now, that said, our democracy really isn't in that sorry of a state. We're on a bit of an angry spike, but we've had these ups and downs before. Like I said, Democracy doesn't prevent corruption; it just makes corruption manageable.
Correct. There are less-corrput democracies--but can you point out one that's as large or as old?
Democracy is not a ward against corruption. It's a ward against corruption destroying the state. Ergo, the government "works".
Your country works? Looks broken to me...
That's actually how democracy works. Lots of special interests, with a population-based pull jointy steering the country along a path that we can all agree on.
You'll see the country working even better come January, when Kerry takes over Executive power without a shot being fired.
This would mean that every document printed would have a traceable signature; the protest letter you sent to congress, the art project you made with your kids, the protest flyer you posted on campus--everything.
If your speach requires you to be untraceable, then by and large you've already lost.
Until we find a way to convert CO2 into straight carbon, the carbon that we have released from underground will always be with us up here.
Unless, of course we--oh--bury it in liquid form underground...
Spell it wrong.
Go to your local High School and find someone to help you write the conversation in French, and then have that person read it into a tape. Then write down what you hear, phonetically.
Or, use french grammar and English words.
Yes. As much as it is to change the minds of the thousand people I pass every day.
A small person with sufficient budget can keep the governmet honest--see Ralph Nader for a great example. That same small person with the same small budget can not change everyone's mind--see Ralph Nader for a great example.
I need not give you a store just something better. VISA, MASTERCARD, AMEX, DINNERS, DISCOVER, SEARS.....etc etc etc etc ...
Those don't fit the description. They're a seperate service that pays for things for you and then comes after you for the money.
Unfortunately you always sign a slip. If it's not on the site it's with UPS, FEDEX or whoever delivers the merchandise to your door. If you did not sign for it then you do not have to pay. One click is the plastic card the legal obligation to pay is still your signature.
Wrong. I mean, dead wrong. If UPS just leaves the Amazon package at your door, and you pick it up & take it inside, you still legally have to provide the funds to Amazon.
Please explain why the effort to blend in--which would include convincing thousands if not millions of people to conform--is not better spent just making the government honest.
Kindly point me to a nationwide store, in the USA, where I can give them my payment information once and then never even have to sign a slip ever again. Usage of a directory and ID to look up who I am, or a membership card, is acceptable--but having to go back to the very same person isn't.
Amazon's "one-click" patent, for example, is in NO WAY innovative.
"In no way?"
No. It might not be innovative enough to deserve patent protection, but it's certainly "innovative."
http://www.ooomacros.org/
Yes,, the macro. MUCH better control than the built-in exporter.
OO's built-in PDF exporter needs work--but if you get the enhanced PDF exporter, you get a product just about as good as Word + Acrobat. Maybe better.
skewing the tax code to favour the welathy and bankrupt the treasury is not excusable.
It's impossible to bankrupt the treasury. If, to pick a wild example, we elected a bunch of debt-hating communists, the federal government could simply print money to fulfill literal-value of past debt and then change the currency to a new standard.
Sure, it'd wreck the economy of the entire world--but the US Gov't could do it relatively easily.
You really, honestly can't be farther from the truth. In those rare instances where two joysticks are used, they work VERY well. Halo's the best example, but there are a few others. Mouselooking is better than a keyboard or most Atari-style PC joysticks, but for most games it's just not as intuitive as a joystick.
As for the lure of console games: When I play a PC game, I have to wonder "am I playing the game that I paid money for, or a buggy example thereof"?
By and by, you are missing one other very important thing about modern controllers. The games were designed to use them. From Rogue Squadron to Halo, the current console generation set a new standard on how to design games to use everything you know the player's going to see and feel.
"a couple" = 3 (higher bond.)
3 days for $1500, = $500 per day.
365 * $500 = $182,500 per year IT labor budget.
If the equivalent of one full-time six-figure person spends three MORE days configuring redundant desktops instead of redundant servers, either it's a horribly big network for that one person (if each replacement takes two hours--which is a lot--that's twelves replacements per year!) or they're incompetent.