I'm not sure if the engine referenced is responsible for rendering graphics. I am a HUGE Bethesda fanboy... I'll admit it. I LOVE Oblivion and all of it's DLC as well as Morrowind and Fallout 3. However, those plastic looking expressionless faces are sub par for such fantastic games. I realize that this is a difficult thing to accomplish with current technology and that most games suffer from this to some extent. The other thing that bugs me about the engine is that the women are very manly looking. If I were Bethesda, my big focus for my next engine iteration would be on having the character models show at least a little bit of emotion and make the women look like women.
The game mechanics portions of their engines are wonderful and their talent at creating atmosphere in a game is spot on. That has got to be quite an achievement in games where people play for sixty to over a hundred hours. Their games never feel terribly repetitive to me. I stay engaged pretty much the whole time.
I see the point you are trying to make, but the home computer market existed long before Microsoft. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. There was the Atari 1200XL that was pretty popular too. The schools had TRS-80s. My first "real computer" with a tape drive and everything was a Commodore 64. I miss that machine. [SIGH]... what was I saying? Oh yeah. I never heard of Microsoft or Windows until I was in college and one of my classmates asked me if I had seen that new "Windows" thing that was out. I saw it in one of the labs and wondered what the hell you would ever need that mouse and all that junk for when you had a perfectly good keyboard and command prompt. All the first IBM home computer did, in my opinion, was kill the TRS and the Amiga.
What I am trying to say is that Microsoft did the same thing to the home computer market that they did to the browser market when Netscape was king. They saw a burgeoning market and destroyed it by reshaping it into a tool that would make them masters of the universe. You can have a computer in any flavor you want as long as it runs windows.
For all you Apple fans, I know the IIe was humming along beautifully in the same era before MS destroyed the wonderfully varied marketplace, but I couldn't afford one and never got into them.
I'm not convinced that Bill's dominance in business is a phenomenon to be treasured in the annals of computer history. I'm not usually an MS hater, but I think they have done as much harm as they have good.
Acid06, I would like to say that I have worked with programmers in Pocos de Caldas and you guys have some top notch people in the business. They work for a third of what we earn here. I've always thought that was unfair because they are as good as my people here... of course my people are now drawing unemployment and having zero luck finding jobs at the moment. I don't want you to think that my comments on this subject are a reflection of Brazilians because the ones I know are very professional and skilled.
I understand your point. I also acknowledge that California's utter financial failure is not solely due to environmental policy. The discussion here revolves around carbon credits so I was limiting my commentary to energy policy. There are many factors in California's crisis. Energy policy, outrageous taxes and cost of living are big drivers, though.
I am not a fool chasing windmills disguised as environmentalists. The deregulated power industry put me in the spot I am in. These carbon credits won't fix it. If power goes up any more than it already has, there is no hope whatsoever of my plant restarting. They will add another production line in some other country and I will move, exit this business, or find another line of work. There are other facilities in my company here in the USA that are still struggling along right now. Carbon credits will add to their cost and they will be shut down just like we were. That's a simple fact. If the current administration pushes this issue as hard as they say they will, all heavy manufacturing that deals with pollutants will simply exit the U.S.
We can control pollution to a certain extent by demanding more from the industries causing the problem. However, the point of diminishing returns is reached rapidly and it will cause a mass exodus of certain types of business. Business that employs lots of people with good paying jobs that buy lots of computers, cars, groceries, houses, and so on. These carbon credits will hurt many businesses and ruin others. That will lead to further job loss and a worsening of the economy. I'm a "computer guy" not an economist, but that much I do know.
I see your point and I know too well that companies will cry wolf every time the government holds their feet to the fire. However, in this case, they aren't crying wolf. Energy drives our economy and increasing it's cost will most certainly hurt our economy.
My company doesn't make bluejeans. I re-read my post and I'm fairly certain I didn't mention Levi's 501 anywhere. My production lines consumed 450 megawatts of power before they shut us down. I'm not sure what you would consider a significant cost driver for a business, but that was a pretty significant driver in mine. I spent a lot of time tweaking software to make sure that power was used perfectly every day to make the maximum amount of product possible with as little waste as possible. I don't do that right now since we can't afford to run with the economy in the toilet and power through the roof.
Before our power costs got out of control, China was BUYING everything we could make.
Thanks for participating, though. That was big of you.
Ummm... my company has several plants in Brazil. I know exactly what I am talking about. I know how much it costs to make our product there versus how much it costs here in the USA. I see reports on it every quarter. The environmental laws in Brazil were implemented in the 90's and updated in 2004. Before that, it was nearly a free for all. The plants were built before the current regs. Brazil won't be getting any more of these plants now that the new laws are in place. They will go elsewhere.
The hydro power was great until 2001 when there was a drought and the government had to ration power in Brazil. That's great for business. Now they are trying to build gas fired power plants to diversify. All nineteen of those new plants burn good old fossil fuel. That's very green.
Yep, you're right. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Hell, I've got software running in two plants in Brazil right now.
I will probably be blasted by all the environmentalists in the group, but this simply won't work. My office is two hundred feet from a coal fired power plant. They are upgrading their pollution controls right now. They are spending over $200 million on it. There is a new plant scheduled to be online in a matter of months right next to it. This is the cheapest source of power in the area. It employs hundreds of people. My company had thousands of people last year. The cost of electricity shut us down. All of my friends are sitting at home drawing unemployment. I don't know what they are going to do when their benefits are exhausted. High electricity costs will drive jobs out of America. Power is the primary cost of many manufacturing processes. All manufacturing where power is the primary driver will be done in China, Mexico, Brazil, Iceland, etc. It will be done where there are no carbon credits to buy and the environmental laws are lax. Business goes where its cheap to operate.
You aren't saving the environment by driving out business. The president cited California as an example of good energy policy. A lot of power consumed in California comes from neighboring states that don't have such strict regulations. The government of California is broke. They may not be able to make payroll next month. Is that where we want America to go? Is that our future model?
We are going to drive our businesses overseas. These foreign countries will build power plants to supply their new found industry. They won't care much about pollution other than to pay lip service to it. By the time we are finished cleaning up America's air, we'll all be sitting on our thumbs with no jobs lamenting our plight. On the upside, the air we are breathing during this wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth may perhaps be slightly cleaner than before. If your goal is to reverse global climate change, you are sadly mistaken if you think this will fix it. Other nations will fill in the production gaps. They don't give a crap about the environment. They want power. You gain power by having a happy, well fed, and prosperous population. This is done through industry and jobs. The pollution will simply be outsourced along with your job.
Its not revenge. That is preposterous. I am stating very clearly that what this moron did was not a joke. It wasn't funny. A very young woman was hurt very badly. It has nothing to do with revenge. It's called justice. How is two years in prison revenge? Did she get anything out of it? Revenge is removing his knee or kidney or bursting his spleen or whatever. Having to do things for her that she can't do for herself because of something he did to her is justice. It is taking responsibility for your actions. It is showing remorse for your idiocy.
Revenge would be hunting down the idiot that hit me and smashing her knee with a sledge hammer. I have no desire to do any such thing.
Now hobble back under your rock you mental midget.
Speaking as someone who got run over by a Ford Explorer driven by a drooling idiot, I bet you'd feel quite differently if this dumbass had put your stupid ass in the hospital.
The most miserable part of going through months of surgeries and rehab to try to put your life back together is knowing that the jackass that hit you isn't even sorry about it. I got a year of misery and she got a new car.
When he gets out of prison, he should have to take care of her lawn and clean her house once a week for the next 20 years. Every time he doesn't perform the work to her satisfaction, it's another week in jail.
You can take that Red Bull and shove it. I don't give a shit what he was drinking. Putting on that costume and making a joke out of the misery he caused would have gotten him five to ten if I were a judge.
My wife, I, and our kids went to a Christmas pageant Saturday night to watch my step mother sing in the choir. We went to candle light service at our own church Christmas Eve. I agree with you whole heartedly. That one service reminds everyone there why we celebrate Christmas. It also reminds you why you go to church on Sundays. We love the candle light service and I know that my kids know why we Christians celebrate Christmas.
I could absolutely care less about the fact that pagan religions celebrate whatever they celebrated during the month of what we now call December. I don't care what pagan or other religions have always celebrated around Christmas. What exactly is the point of that statement? I really don't understand what theorem is proven by the fact that other religions have celebrated something on or about the same day. It reminds me of a quote from the movie Forest Gump. "That is a very lovely story, and you tell it so well."
What is the theorem proven by the fact that Christmas has been commercialized by our capitalist society? Christmas is no longer a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ because Wal-Mart makes a mint from it? That is excellent proof? Since the gigantic megacorps that make millions or billions from Jesus Christ's birth don't call it Christmas anymore, I say that particular proof is crap. They are now making money from the "Holiday Season" so Christmas has been returned to us and we know exactly why we celebrate it.
If someone doesn't care about Christ, Christians, or Christmas, why do they care if I do? I have never seen a group so hell bent (pun intended) on ruining my holiday, my religion, and my celebrations as atheists. The only thing this group appears to firmly believe in is attempting to tear down my faith.
It's Christmas. I love it. I thank God for the gift he sent us in his only begotten son. I thank God for the opportunity to celebrate it on whatever day we choose to celebrate it. We had a fantastic Christmas full of good cheer, thankfulness, giving, good food, good family, good friends, and worship. If someone else didn't then I am sorry for them. If a person doesn't believe then we pray for them. If you don't believe and don't care, then be quiet. This "holiday" is not about you nor is it for you. Wal-Mart has a "Holiday Celebration" for you instead. Take it or leave it, but stop whining about it.
Incidentally, St. Nicholas was the patron saint of anonymous giving. That is what Santa Claus represents. That's what the whole tradition represents to me. We give to the needy. We give to the Churches who use the money to help the needy. We buy nice things for our children and put it under the tree. They get gifts from St. Nicholas a.k.a. Santa Claus and the folks who helped with that process are emulating the real St. Nicholas in not expecting thanks or gratitude for a kind gesture. Jesus said that a man who marches through the streets loudly proclaiming his tithes are paid has already received his reward. The giving of gifts by Christians is in the tradition of Christ's teachings. Our children may not be needy, but we give to them in the same spirit in the hopes that they will do the same when they are adults. That is: giving to the needy, worshiping God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Holy Spirit, and passing this tradition along to their own children.
Matthew 6:1-4 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. I'm not inviting posters to attack my faith. I am not attempting to insult anyone of another faith. I believe that most followers of other faiths don't care what I believe and aren't bothered by the fact that I do believe. What I am trying to say is that it IS a Christian holiday and WE DO know why we celebrate it. It is NOT because we all go broke and it DOESN'T MATTER what flipping day of what flipping month we do it.
Merry Christmas and may God bless all of us. I hope that your new year is even better than your last.
I found a Compute!s Gazette on good old wikipedia here.
And my first computer was actually a Timex Sinclair 1000 rather than a TI99/4A. I was wrong. I remember the crappy membrane keyboard and the whopping 2Kb of RAM.
I wish I still had one of those to show to my kids.
Ahh. I remember my commodore 64 quite fondly. I saved my money and bought myself a TI99/4A. I got a C64 for Christmas after that. I loved that thing! Peeking and Poking memory, reading and rereading the programmers manual I bought at the mall. Sitting in class writing programs to try out when I got home. I didn't have a storage device. I would type in programs, run them, and turn it off. If you wanted to run your program again, you just type it in again. Then I got a tape drive and thought I was in heaven! I could save my work and thus write more complex programs.
Does any one else remember Compute's! Gazette? I think that was the name of it. It had program listings in there for games and things. I use to type those bastards in too. They were pages and pages long and took quite a while to enter. Debugging my typos was a great way to learn code too.
Now we all have kids and jobs and no time to play with the fun stuff. On top of that, every person who is an aquaintance of an aquaintance thinks that your are their personal tech support every time they screw up their computer becuase they visit too many p0rn sites.
I miss the good old days when people who had computers were geeks and gamers and either knew what they were doing or quickly figured it out with a little help. Today, every drooling idiot has a computer and thinks that you are supposed to help their stupid ass's if you are an IT professional.
After reading through all of the comments. You don't want to do this unless your really bored. It looks like he was having an affair with a VP that reports to him.
I would find it highly ironic to find out after years of Microsoft screwing me over that it is actually against company policy for Microsofties to screw each other.
First of all, it's a pretty poor time in the history of humanity to be a professional writer. Hobbyists and semi-professional writers can easily reach wide audiences and they often submit their material to the same places as the professionals. Supply becomes higher than demand.
Second, I get almost all of my news from the internet and I think I know what's going on in the world at any given time. However, I will occassionally sit down with a newspaper when I can string together several minutes of free time. By the time I am through reading a long article about a current event, I am always amazed at how much I didn't know about it.
Lots of folks have already said that the internet is driving short, data dense prose and I agree that we are all the poorer for it. However, I know that I will continue to bypass longer stuff for higher density content because I can get my info quicker. I am a lazy bastard at heart and want to get my info and move on with the least amount of effort possible. I am frankly amazed that I was able to overcome my laziness and complete this post.
Lawsuits are only effective when the knuckle head behind the steering wheel has money. This woman had a minimum wage job and lived in a rented trailer house. She had the minimum insurance required in Texas which is $20,000 of bodily injury. Technically, most health insurance policies stipulate that they get reimbursed before you do. If she breaks your arm and you get an ambulance ride to an ER for a cast, I'll guarantee you that you will likely exceed that money. Hell, I probably exceeded her $20K in the first hour.
I could sue her. I would win the case within an hour. My wife took photos of all the metal hardware they bolted onto my leg from the outside, the chest tubes, all of the machines breathing for me and all that other crap. The problem is that it would cost me at least $3000 or $4000 and all I would have at the end of the day is a judgement that she will never pay. I got a lawyer and am trying to get what little there is from the auto insurance policy. My lawyer just did a case for some kid who was out drinking and got hit on his bike later that night. The kid got several hundred thousand dollars. It all depends on who hits you. Murphy's law says that it will usually be some slobbering idiot with a busted up car and little or no insurance as was my case.
I really didn't have time to dwell on that, though. I was focused on getting out of a wheel chair and onto a walker. Then getting off the walker onto two canes. I finally got down to one cane and thankfully don't have to use it anymore either.
Whoever said that I was lucky above was absolutely right. I had all of these bad ass doctors coming in from the level 1 trauma center to check out all of the handy work. One of the motorcycle victim reconstruction surgeons told me that he had never seen a human being hit that hard and live to tell about it. When a motocyclist gets hit like that, the only way to see the bodily injury is to take a trip to the morgue. They couldn't figure out how my brain didn't get scrambled. I told them I was crazy to start with so there is no empirical way to discern further damage.
I'm not riding any more. She screwed up my knee bad enough that I probably can't. Besides, who the hell wants to lay in a hospital bed for months on end taking morphine and vicodin to get through the day? If I never see an IV needle, or a 20 inch incision with staples all over it ever again, I'll be a happy guy! I'll seek my thrills elsewhere.
I don't know if you can make the roads safe for motorcycles of any kind, unfortunately. I was a long time rider and cycle enthusiast. I had lots of good safety gear, lights all over my bike, etc. I had taken safety courses with hands on crash avoidance scenarios. Last year an idiot woman in an SUV launched herself from a side road like she was on a suicide mission to get across the four lane divided highway where I was riding. She crushed my leg which they nearly had to amputate; broke my ribs which consequently punctured my lungs; ripped a hole in my small intestine; tore my abdominal wall to the point where I now have a piece of kevlar mesh holding my organs in on the right side. It's been a year and a half and I almost walk normally now. I was wearing a full face helmet that hit the ground repeatedly as I flew through the median.
I got a twelve day stay in an ICU, four major surguries, four months in the hospital, a year of rehab, more than a half million US dollars in medical bills, and pain that I would never wish on anyone. She got a ticket for failure to yield right of way and a new SUV.
If you want to ride a bike on the highways in the U.S. beware that the consequences of the bad judgement of the drooling idiots you share the road with is extremely high. The helmet will ensure that you remain concious throughout the ordeal... if you are lucky... and if you aren't, at least your wife, kids, parents, or whatever will be able to have an open casket funeral.
I will be bashed and modded down, but that's OK. I like the Halo series. It is a perfectly tuned console FPS. The story is great and it has great replay value online. I am still playing Halo 2 on "Live". I have a Wii, PS3, PSP, DS, PS2, XBox, and XBox 360. I definitely like my 360 games the best for whatever reason. I mostly play PSP (hacked of course) and XBox 360.
I don't think that Halo 3 is any more over hyped than any other big budget game out recently. Final Fantasy games are rammed down our throats and I don't think they are all that great. I've heard enough about WoW to make me want to puke every time I hear it and I have never played it. The same can be said for MGS 4, and I can't stand that damned pimp daddy GTA garbage. Talk about over hyped big budget filth! Halo 3 isn't exactly breaking new marketing ground here.
I love the Unreal series, but I will still take a Halo on my 62" DLP over a PC FPS any day. Since I am rambling, the PS3 games that come out this season had better rock because I am feeling screwed out of nearly a thousand dollars for a console, controllers, and two "decent" games right now. Thanks a lot $ony.
I was playing Halo2 a few days ago. One of the kiddies playing had the gamer tag NigrBeetr. I find that to be highly offensive, immature, and indicative of a utter lack of character. You had better not use Linux in your gamer tag, though or you're in big trouble!
WOW!!! That's like deja vu! I was imediately taken waaay back to my teens. I remember buying the cardboard box that had the thin blue D&D rule set book. I think I remember there being a campaign in there too with some character sheets, graph paper, and dice. The dice were crappy. Most of my friends bought separate sets. You could get cool glass ones of various colors, etc.
Ah, those were the days. I split my time between playing D&D, writing programs for my commodore 64 using the thick programming reference manual as necessary, and mapping out new dungeons and stories to play the next time I got to see my friends.
We did the same thing you did. We used basic D&D rules, but we also folded in a lot of items from the newer AD&D rule set. The AD&D monster books had a lot cooler enemies and character classes, etc. I remember how excited I was when I saw the Paladin class for the first time.
We don't need to watch movies, listen to MP3s, view images, surf the web, do our dishes, and drive to work using the same machine. Um... I'm reading this slashdot article and posting this reply in my living room on my PS3 running YDL 5.0. I'm sitting about 15 feet from my 61" HDTV with a wireless keyboard and mouse in my recliner. I'm not listening to any MP3s at the moment, but I might. Where's the "do your dishes" utility? I haven't tried that one, yet. Do I have to get out of this recliner to invoke it?
Yep. Been there done that and still have the T-Shirt. I remember when my marraige was new and things were fun. We had sex and did things together. Those were the days.
Now I game and am celibate. I can only assume these two life truths will hold until I die or get divorced. Enjoy it while it lasts. On the upside, it won't be too terribly long before you have a lot more gaming time on your hands once again. That is an upside, right?
The entire premise behind the "loss" of revenue reported by BSA and others is patently false. You have to make a gigantic assumption that those who "stole" your software would have purchased it. I offer this hypothetical example... suppose I could get Micro$oft word from the office and load it on my home machine. Is M$ out whatever the cost of this is at the store? Of course not. I would have downloaded something free from the internet for my word processing needs and not used word at all. The reason I am using it is because I like it and it was just as free as the one I could've downloaded. Further complicating matters, suppose I did have to buy it because I couldn't steal it from work... would I have purchased that product or a much cheaper one that does the same job. How the hell are they calculating the loss and who lost the money? The cheapest decent word processing software company lost the money, not M$.
The numbers therefore, are bull crap as we say here in Texas.
I read on my PDA. I have read a lot of books over the last four or five years that there is no way to for a surveyor to discern. One of the first books I read was War and Peace by Tolstoy... excellent book!
I think reading has increased because we are all online. However, I don't think it positively affects our communication skills. There are too many acronyms and keyboard shortcuts around these days. I find that my written communication skills get slightly better during and shortly after I read a quality, well written novel. However, after a few weeks I am back to the same old crappy writing style I tend to maintain.
I am very confused about the statement that 31.5 MPG in a hybrid is more "environmentally friendly" than the same milage is say... a 2003 Escort. The pollutants result from the burning of the fuel. Both cars consume the same amount of fuel. The hybrid is not consuming the toxins in any sort of additional process. Both cars have catalytic converters and emmisions controls.
If there is any less pollution from the exhaust of the hybrid, how is it achieved?
If the hybrid is in fact polluting less, why don't we just put the same emmisions controls on all the Escorts?
Slashdot Mirror
talks about the possibility of Project Natal bringing gesture recognition to Windows
I know what my first gesture for my windows installation will be...
I'm not sure if the engine referenced is responsible for rendering graphics. I am a HUGE Bethesda fanboy... I'll admit it. I LOVE Oblivion and all of it's DLC as well as Morrowind and Fallout 3. However, those plastic looking expressionless faces are sub par for such fantastic games. I realize that this is a difficult thing to accomplish with current technology and that most games suffer from this to some extent. The other thing that bugs me about the engine is that the women are very manly looking. If I were Bethesda, my big focus for my next engine iteration would be on having the character models show at least a little bit of emotion and make the women look like women.
The game mechanics portions of their engines are wonderful and their talent at creating atmosphere in a game is spot on. That has got to be quite an achievement in games where people play for sixty to over a hundred hours. Their games never feel terribly repetitive to me. I stay engaged pretty much the whole time.
I see the point you are trying to make, but the home computer market existed long before Microsoft. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. There was the Atari 1200XL that was pretty popular too. The schools had TRS-80s. My first "real computer" with a tape drive and everything was a Commodore 64. I miss that machine. [SIGH]... what was I saying? Oh yeah. I never heard of Microsoft or Windows until I was in college and one of my classmates asked me if I had seen that new "Windows" thing that was out. I saw it in one of the labs and wondered what the hell you would ever need that mouse and all that junk for when you had a perfectly good keyboard and command prompt. All the first IBM home computer did, in my opinion, was kill the TRS and the Amiga.
What I am trying to say is that Microsoft did the same thing to the home computer market that they did to the browser market when Netscape was king. They saw a burgeoning market and destroyed it by reshaping it into a tool that would make them masters of the universe. You can have a computer in any flavor you want as long as it runs windows.
For all you Apple fans, I know the IIe was humming along beautifully in the same era before MS destroyed the wonderfully varied marketplace, but I couldn't afford one and never got into them.
I'm not convinced that Bill's dominance in business is a phenomenon to be treasured in the annals of computer history. I'm not usually an MS hater, but I think they have done as much harm as they have good.
Oh yeah... I almost forgot... "Get off my lawn!"
Acid06, I would like to say that I have worked with programmers in Pocos de Caldas and you guys have some top notch people in the business. They work for a third of what we earn here. I've always thought that was unfair because they are as good as my people here... of course my people are now drawing unemployment and having zero luck finding jobs at the moment. I don't want you to think that my comments on this subject are a reflection of Brazilians because the ones I know are very professional and skilled.
I understand your point. I also acknowledge that California's utter financial failure is not solely due to environmental policy. The discussion here revolves around carbon credits so I was limiting my commentary to energy policy. There are many factors in California's crisis. Energy policy, outrageous taxes and cost of living are big drivers, though.
I am not a fool chasing windmills disguised as environmentalists. The deregulated power industry put me in the spot I am in. These carbon credits won't fix it. If power goes up any more than it already has, there is no hope whatsoever of my plant restarting. They will add another production line in some other country and I will move, exit this business, or find another line of work. There are other facilities in my company here in the USA that are still struggling along right now. Carbon credits will add to their cost and they will be shut down just like we were. That's a simple fact. If the current administration pushes this issue as hard as they say they will, all heavy manufacturing that deals with pollutants will simply exit the U.S.
We can control pollution to a certain extent by demanding more from the industries causing the problem. However, the point of diminishing returns is reached rapidly and it will cause a mass exodus of certain types of business. Business that employs lots of people with good paying jobs that buy lots of computers, cars, groceries, houses, and so on. These carbon credits will hurt many businesses and ruin others. That will lead to further job loss and a worsening of the economy. I'm a "computer guy" not an economist, but that much I do know.
I see your point and I know too well that companies will cry wolf every time the government holds their feet to the fire. However, in this case, they aren't crying wolf. Energy drives our economy and increasing it's cost will most certainly hurt our economy.
My company doesn't make bluejeans. I re-read my post and I'm fairly certain I didn't mention Levi's 501 anywhere. My production lines consumed 450 megawatts of power before they shut us down. I'm not sure what you would consider a significant cost driver for a business, but that was a pretty significant driver in mine. I spent a lot of time tweaking software to make sure that power was used perfectly every day to make the maximum amount of product possible with as little waste as possible. I don't do that right now since we can't afford to run with the economy in the toilet and power through the roof.
Before our power costs got out of control, China was BUYING everything we could make.
Thanks for participating, though. That was big of you.
Ummm... my company has several plants in Brazil. I know exactly what I am talking about. I know how much it costs to make our product there versus how much it costs here in the USA. I see reports on it every quarter. The environmental laws in Brazil were implemented in the 90's and updated in 2004. Before that, it was nearly a free for all. The plants were built before the current regs. Brazil won't be getting any more of these plants now that the new laws are in place. They will go elsewhere.
The hydro power was great until 2001 when there was a drought and the government had to ration power in Brazil. That's great for business. Now they are trying to build gas fired power plants to diversify. All nineteen of those new plants burn good old fossil fuel. That's very green.
Yep, you're right. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Hell, I've got software running in two plants in Brazil right now.
I will probably be blasted by all the environmentalists in the group, but this simply won't work. My office is two hundred feet from a coal fired power plant. They are upgrading their pollution controls right now. They are spending over $200 million on it. There is a new plant scheduled to be online in a matter of months right next to it. This is the cheapest source of power in the area. It employs hundreds of people. My company had thousands of people last year. The cost of electricity shut us down. All of my friends are sitting at home drawing unemployment. I don't know what they are going to do when their benefits are exhausted. High electricity costs will drive jobs out of America. Power is the primary cost of many manufacturing processes. All manufacturing where power is the primary driver will be done in China, Mexico, Brazil, Iceland, etc. It will be done where there are no carbon credits to buy and the environmental laws are lax. Business goes where its cheap to operate.
You aren't saving the environment by driving out business. The president cited California as an example of good energy policy. A lot of power consumed in California comes from neighboring states that don't have such strict regulations. The government of California is broke. They may not be able to make payroll next month. Is that where we want America to go? Is that our future model?
We are going to drive our businesses overseas. These foreign countries will build power plants to supply their new found industry. They won't care much about pollution other than to pay lip service to it. By the time we are finished cleaning up America's air, we'll all be sitting on our thumbs with no jobs lamenting our plight. On the upside, the air we are breathing during this wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth may perhaps be slightly cleaner than before. If your goal is to reverse global climate change, you are sadly mistaken if you think this will fix it. Other nations will fill in the production gaps. They don't give a crap about the environment. They want power. You gain power by having a happy, well fed, and prosperous population. This is done through industry and jobs. The pollution will simply be outsourced along with your job.
Its not revenge. That is preposterous. I am stating very clearly that what this moron did was not a joke. It wasn't funny. A very young woman was hurt very badly. It has nothing to do with revenge. It's called justice. How is two years in prison revenge? Did she get anything out of it? Revenge is removing his knee or kidney or bursting his spleen or whatever. Having to do things for her that she can't do for herself because of something he did to her is justice. It is taking responsibility for your actions. It is showing remorse for your idiocy.
Revenge would be hunting down the idiot that hit me and smashing her knee with a sledge hammer. I have no desire to do any such thing.
Now hobble back under your rock you mental midget.
Speaking as someone who got run over by a Ford Explorer driven by a drooling idiot, I bet you'd feel quite differently if this dumbass had put your stupid ass in the hospital.
The most miserable part of going through months of surgeries and rehab to try to put your life back together is knowing that the jackass that hit you isn't even sorry about it. I got a year of misery and she got a new car.
When he gets out of prison, he should have to take care of her lawn and clean her house once a week for the next 20 years. Every time he doesn't perform the work to her satisfaction, it's another week in jail.
You can take that Red Bull and shove it. I don't give a shit what he was drinking. Putting on that costume and making a joke out of the misery he caused would have gotten him five to ten if I were a judge.
I could absolutely care less about the fact that pagan religions celebrate whatever they celebrated during the month of what we now call December. I don't care what pagan or other religions have always celebrated around Christmas. What exactly is the point of that statement? I really don't understand what theorem is proven by the fact that other religions have celebrated something on or about the same day. It reminds me of a quote from the movie Forest Gump. "That is a very lovely story, and you tell it so well."
What is the theorem proven by the fact that Christmas has been commercialized by our capitalist society? Christmas is no longer a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ because Wal-Mart makes a mint from it? That is excellent proof? Since the gigantic megacorps that make millions or billions from Jesus Christ's birth don't call it Christmas anymore, I say that particular proof is crap. They are now making money from the "Holiday Season" so Christmas has been returned to us and we know exactly why we celebrate it.
If someone doesn't care about Christ, Christians, or Christmas, why do they care if I do? I have never seen a group so hell bent (pun intended) on ruining my holiday, my religion, and my celebrations as atheists. The only thing this group appears to firmly believe in is attempting to tear down my faith.
It's Christmas. I love it. I thank God for the gift he sent us in his only begotten son. I thank God for the opportunity to celebrate it on whatever day we choose to celebrate it. We had a fantastic Christmas full of good cheer, thankfulness, giving, good food, good family, good friends, and worship. If someone else didn't then I am sorry for them. If a person doesn't believe then we pray for them. If you don't believe and don't care, then be quiet. This "holiday" is not about you nor is it for you. Wal-Mart has a "Holiday Celebration" for you instead. Take it or leave it, but stop whining about it.
Incidentally, St. Nicholas was the patron saint of anonymous giving. That is what Santa Claus represents. That's what the whole tradition represents to me. We give to the needy. We give to the Churches who use the money to help the needy. We buy nice things for our children and put it under the tree. They get gifts from St. Nicholas a.k.a. Santa Claus and the folks who helped with that process are emulating the real St. Nicholas in not expecting thanks or gratitude for a kind gesture. Jesus said that a man who marches through the streets loudly proclaiming his tithes are paid has already received his reward. The giving of gifts by Christians is in the tradition of Christ's teachings. Our children may not be needy, but we give to them in the same spirit in the hopes that they will do the same when they are adults. That is: giving to the needy, worshiping God, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Holy Spirit, and passing this tradition along to their own children. Matthew 6:1-4
But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. I'm not inviting posters to attack my faith. I am not attempting to insult anyone of another faith. I believe that most followers of other faiths don't care what I believe and aren't bothered by the fact that I do believe. What I am trying to say is that it IS a Christian holiday and WE DO know why we celebrate it. It is NOT because we all go broke and it DOESN'T MATTER what flipping day of what flipping month we do it.
Merry Christmas and may God bless all of us. I hope that your new year is even better than your last.
I found a Compute!s Gazette on good old wikipedia here.
And my first computer was actually a Timex Sinclair 1000 rather than a TI99/4A. I was wrong. I remember the crappy membrane keyboard and the whopping 2Kb of RAM.
I wish I still had one of those to show to my kids.
Ahh. I remember my commodore 64 quite fondly. I saved my money and bought myself a TI99/4A. I got a C64 for Christmas after that. I loved that thing! Peeking and Poking memory, reading and rereading the programmers manual I bought at the mall. Sitting in class writing programs to try out when I got home. I didn't have a storage device. I would type in programs, run them, and turn it off. If you wanted to run your program again, you just type it in again. Then I got a tape drive and thought I was in heaven! I could save my work and thus write more complex programs.
Does any one else remember Compute's! Gazette? I think that was the name of it. It had program listings in there for games and things. I use to type those bastards in too. They were pages and pages long and took quite a while to enter. Debugging my typos was a great way to learn code too.
Now we all have kids and jobs and no time to play with the fun stuff. On top of that, every person who is an aquaintance of an aquaintance thinks that your are their personal tech support every time they screw up their computer becuase they visit too many p0rn sites.
I miss the good old days when people who had computers were geeks and gamers and either knew what they were doing or quickly figured it out with a little help. Today, every drooling idiot has a computer and thinks that you are supposed to help their stupid ass's if you are an IT professional.
I would find it highly ironic to find out after years of Microsoft screwing me over that it is actually against company policy for Microsofties to screw each other.
First of all, it's a pretty poor time in the history of humanity to be a professional writer. Hobbyists and semi-professional writers can easily reach wide audiences and they often submit their material to the same places as the professionals. Supply becomes higher than demand.
Second, I get almost all of my news from the internet and I think I know what's going on in the world at any given time. However, I will occassionally sit down with a newspaper when I can string together several minutes of free time. By the time I am through reading a long article about a current event, I am always amazed at how much I didn't know about it.
Lots of folks have already said that the internet is driving short, data dense prose and I agree that we are all the poorer for it. However, I know that I will continue to bypass longer stuff for higher density content because I can get my info quicker. I am a lazy bastard at heart and want to get my info and move on with the least amount of effort possible. I am frankly amazed that I was able to overcome my laziness and complete this post.
Lawsuits are only effective when the knuckle head behind the steering wheel has money. This woman had a minimum wage job and lived in a rented trailer house. She had the minimum insurance required in Texas which is $20,000 of bodily injury. Technically, most health insurance policies stipulate that they get reimbursed before you do. If she breaks your arm and you get an ambulance ride to an ER for a cast, I'll guarantee you that you will likely exceed that money. Hell, I probably exceeded her $20K in the first hour.
I could sue her. I would win the case within an hour. My wife took photos of all the metal hardware they bolted onto my leg from the outside, the chest tubes, all of the machines breathing for me and all that other crap. The problem is that it would cost me at least $3000 or $4000 and all I would have at the end of the day is a judgement that she will never pay. I got a lawyer and am trying to get what little there is from the auto insurance policy. My lawyer just did a case for some kid who was out drinking and got hit on his bike later that night. The kid got several hundred thousand dollars. It all depends on who hits you. Murphy's law says that it will usually be some slobbering idiot with a busted up car and little or no insurance as was my case.
I really didn't have time to dwell on that, though. I was focused on getting out of a wheel chair and onto a walker. Then getting off the walker onto two canes. I finally got down to one cane and thankfully don't have to use it anymore either.
Whoever said that I was lucky above was absolutely right. I had all of these bad ass doctors coming in from the level 1 trauma center to check out all of the handy work. One of the motorcycle victim reconstruction surgeons told me that he had never seen a human being hit that hard and live to tell about it. When a motocyclist gets hit like that, the only way to see the bodily injury is to take a trip to the morgue. They couldn't figure out how my brain didn't get scrambled. I told them I was crazy to start with so there is no empirical way to discern further damage.
I'm not riding any more. She screwed up my knee bad enough that I probably can't. Besides, who the hell wants to lay in a hospital bed for months on end taking morphine and vicodin to get through the day? If I never see an IV needle, or a 20 inch incision with staples all over it ever again, I'll be a happy guy! I'll seek my thrills elsewhere.
I don't know if you can make the roads safe for motorcycles of any kind, unfortunately. I was a long time rider and cycle enthusiast. I had lots of good safety gear, lights all over my bike, etc. I had taken safety courses with hands on crash avoidance scenarios. Last year an idiot woman in an SUV launched herself from a side road like she was on a suicide mission to get across the four lane divided highway where I was riding. She crushed my leg which they nearly had to amputate; broke my ribs which consequently punctured my lungs; ripped a hole in my small intestine; tore my abdominal wall to the point where I now have a piece of kevlar mesh holding my organs in on the right side. It's been a year and a half and I almost walk normally now. I was wearing a full face helmet that hit the ground repeatedly as I flew through the median.
I got a twelve day stay in an ICU, four major surguries, four months in the hospital, a year of rehab, more than a half million US dollars in medical bills, and pain that I would never wish on anyone. She got a ticket for failure to yield right of way and a new SUV.
If you want to ride a bike on the highways in the U.S. beware that the consequences of the bad judgement of the drooling idiots you share the road with is extremely high. The helmet will ensure that you remain concious throughout the ordeal... if you are lucky... and if you aren't, at least your wife, kids, parents, or whatever will be able to have an open casket funeral.
I will be bashed and modded down, but that's OK. I like the Halo series. It is a perfectly tuned console FPS. The story is great and it has great replay value online. I am still playing Halo 2 on "Live". I have a Wii, PS3, PSP, DS, PS2, XBox, and XBox 360. I definitely like my 360 games the best for whatever reason. I mostly play PSP (hacked of course) and XBox 360.
I don't think that Halo 3 is any more over hyped than any other big budget game out recently. Final Fantasy games are rammed down our throats and I don't think they are all that great. I've heard enough about WoW to make me want to puke every time I hear it and I have never played it. The same can be said for MGS 4, and I can't stand that damned pimp daddy GTA garbage. Talk about over hyped big budget filth! Halo 3 isn't exactly breaking new marketing ground here.
I love the Unreal series, but I will still take a Halo on my 62" DLP over a PC FPS any day. Since I am rambling, the PS3 games that come out this season had better rock because I am feeling screwed out of nearly a thousand dollars for a console, controllers, and two "decent" games right now. Thanks a lot $ony.
I was playing Halo2 a few days ago. One of the kiddies playing had the gamer tag NigrBeetr. I find that to be highly offensive, immature, and indicative of a utter lack of character. You had better not use Linux in your gamer tag, though or you're in big trouble!
WOW!!! That's like deja vu! I was imediately taken waaay back to my teens. I remember buying the cardboard box that had the thin blue D&D rule set book. I think I remember there being a campaign in there too with some character sheets, graph paper, and dice. The dice were crappy. Most of my friends bought separate sets. You could get cool glass ones of various colors, etc.
Ah, those were the days. I split my time between playing D&D, writing programs for my commodore 64 using the thick programming reference manual as necessary, and mapping out new dungeons and stories to play the next time I got to see my friends.
We did the same thing you did. We used basic D&D rules, but we also folded in a lot of items from the newer AD&D rule set. The AD&D monster books had a lot cooler enemies and character classes, etc. I remember how excited I was when I saw the Paladin class for the first time.
Now I feel like an old bastard. Gee thanks.
Yep. Been there done that and still have the T-Shirt. I remember when my marraige was new and things were fun. We had sex and did things together. Those were the days.
Now I game and am celibate. I can only assume these two life truths will hold until I die or get divorced. Enjoy it while it lasts. On the upside, it won't be too terribly long before you have a lot more gaming time on your hands once again. That is an upside, right?
The entire premise behind the "loss" of revenue reported by BSA and others is patently false. You have to make a gigantic assumption that those who "stole" your software would have purchased it. I offer this hypothetical example... suppose I could get Micro$oft word from the office and load it on my home machine. Is M$ out whatever the cost of this is at the store? Of course not. I would have downloaded something free from the internet for my word processing needs and not used word at all. The reason I am using it is because I like it and it was just as free as the one I could've downloaded. Further complicating matters, suppose I did have to buy it because I couldn't steal it from work... would I have purchased that product or a much cheaper one that does the same job. How the hell are they calculating the loss and who lost the money? The cheapest decent word processing software company lost the money, not M$.
The numbers therefore, are bull crap as we say here in Texas.
I read on my PDA. I have read a lot of books over the last four or five years that there is no way to for a surveyor to discern. One of the first books I read was War and Peace by Tolstoy... excellent book!
I think reading has increased because we are all online. However, I don't think it positively affects our communication skills. There are too many acronyms and keyboard shortcuts around these days. I find that my written communication skills get slightly better during and shortly after I read a quality, well written novel. However, after a few weeks I am back to the same old crappy writing style I tend to maintain.
That's the way it is IMHO... FWIW.
LOL! I crack myself up sometimes.