The problem is that modern large scale farming is the process of converting energy resources into food, so when the oil runs out we'll have a fun problem with food production to deal with too. (Approximately 30% of China's total energy consumption is currently in farming and fertilizer production). http://www.abb.com/global/gad/gad02077.nsf/lupLong Content/88FAFE9ECA2143D1C125702300325D5B
Indeed, I've never even bought any software at all. What I buy is boxes with discs in them, and what I do with those discs once I own them is my business, no license involved.
This is somewhat true. The problem is that for most people, games like loderunner and tetris get boring quickly. Once you've played through once, what else is there to do? That's where big project games differ: playing through the once is a long process with a lot of content. The mainstream gameplayer just doesn't enjoy these simple games anymore, they mostly seem to want to play a story. That's why WOW is a huge success at $25 to buy plus $10/month, while tons of freely available downloadable innovative indie games are not.
The industry isn't lacking creativity at all. The publishers are. There are literally hundreds of cool minigames sitting around at dev houses gathering dust for 2 reasons:
1) neither the dev house management nor the publisher will risk their reputation publishing an unpolished game. 2) the publishers won't risk their money funding the polish on a new game design.
Most of what makes 'game industry' games good, when they are good, are the massive amounts of content that go into them. And there's no way to get around having a team of 50 people sitting around for 2 or 3 years making content.
How SSL's could easily work, though, would be for the SSL issuer to guarantee the arrestability of the SSL buyer. Then if an SSL owner is involved in a scam... well the police go pick him up.
I'd like to follow up on this. I aborted a transaction with walmart the other day because their verified by visa process took me to some third party website. The whois was bizarre as well. I eventually figured out that this is really the company that visa is paying to host their verified by visa pages, but what the heck were they thinking?
Yeah, I actually would be willing to put more value on the office... spending 9 waking hours at the office means I have to deal with a 'roommate' there more than I would have to deal with a roommate at home.
You can't just switch if you can't run your favorite apps or take their data with you. It's not like having to upgrade to a better video card or a new box will prevent you from moving your harddrive and its contents along.
I've worked in a private office, a not so private office, shared an office, and worked in an open floor plan.
The best option i've seen is where we had some communal computers with a standard setup that anyone (and groups) could sit down and work at, plus offices for when we needed to work privately. That was fantastic for productivity (having the offices didn't isolate us), yet also was pleasant because we could retreat to the offices to take phone calls, or to work solo when that was more effective. That's the model every development company ought to have in my opinion.
That's hard to come by though. When deciding between having to work surrounded by people with no privacy, vs having an office with privacy, vs having an office with a view, I value it at $10k/year for each step. I'm currently working in the open floor plan with no view, but I took the job because they offered me $20k more than I was making before plus bonus opportunities that may be worth even more. I've also taken a $10k paycut to go from an internal office to an office with a beautiful view (similar work). Totally worth it. That daily pleasantness did so much for my stress level, helping to improve my health, it was great. I'm actually slightly regretting taking the 20k step up right now given the stress of the environment I'm in now, but hopefully the extra money will let me have kids, and that's important enough for me to make the trade off, at least for a while.
Anyway, all in all I'd strongly urge you to consider just how much value your personal space has for you. Consider: how much extra would you pay in rent not to have to deal with a roommate?
But you can say the same about all the other riots we were being compared to, the exceptions that prove the rule. And I omitted all of the regular sports riots we have because I thought it would be better to compare riots for causes that are mildly reasonable (religion, social justice). But if all you're interested in is who is nuttier, the USA has that won hands down.
It used to be possible to defend Islam to the right wingers in this country (USA) by saying that the terrorism and violence were coming from a relatively tiny number of the practicers of that faith with a very screwed up idea of what that faith meant. No more. Between the raging violence in France and the widespread violence and death threats coming from these cartoons, who can reasonably defend Islam as nonviolent any more?
Who paid for the painting of the chapel? The Catholic Church. Where did the Catholic Church get the money? Years of oppressing the masses. It's not that the work itself is bad, but that the funding taints it. It's much the same with Bill Gates fighting 3rd world disease. Am I against fighting 3rd world disease? Of course not, that's a great cause. But would it have been better to have a computer industry without Microsoft that could have innovated so much further, and made even more funds available to fight for the same causes? Most definitely.
Bad moderators bad! Troll it was certainly not. Flamebait? Maybe. Insightful more likely. Guess it tweaked some moderator where it hurt. Go get'em meta-mods!
However, on the downside for religion, none of those things required religion, and were, sadly, the result of religious exploitation: the art and science done by religious men was done on the backs of peasant laborers who had no choice but to tithe their hard work to the church under threat of violence. And one could easily argue, and surely most thinking people would agree, that all of those fields would have advanced much faster without religion to get in the way.
Religion is not all monster, nor all angel. But it is made up of significant amounts of monster, very little angel, and I'd much rather associate myself with those in favor of abolishing all monstrous practices than those who have a built a long historical record of encouraging them.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that modern large scale farming is the process of converting energy resources into food, so when the oil runs out we'll have a fun problem with food production to deal with too. (Approximately 30% of China's total energy consumption is currently in farming and fertilizer production).g Content/88FAFE9ECA2143D1C125702300325D5B
http://www.abb.com/global/gad/gad02077.nsf/lupLon
It's really just a war between the grey-on-the-left cloud beings and grey-on-the-right cloud beings. Go righties!
Indeed, I've never even bought any software at all. What I buy is boxes with discs in them, and what I do with those discs once I own them is my business, no license involved.
This is somewhat true. The problem is that for most people, games like loderunner and tetris get boring quickly. Once you've played through once, what else is there to do? That's where big project games differ: playing through the once is a long process with a lot of content. The mainstream gameplayer just doesn't enjoy these simple games anymore, they mostly seem to want to play a story. That's why WOW is a huge success at $25 to buy plus $10/month, while tons of freely available downloadable innovative indie games are not.
The industry isn't lacking creativity at all. The publishers are. There are literally hundreds of cool minigames sitting around at dev houses gathering dust for 2 reasons:
1) neither the dev house management nor the publisher will risk their reputation publishing an unpolished game.
2) the publishers won't risk their money funding the polish on a new game design.
Most of what makes 'game industry' games good, when they are good, are the massive amounts of content that go into them. And there's no way to get around having a team of 50 people sitting around for 2 or 3 years making content.
They'd better. Otherwise you'd be wise to keep them away from your refrigerator.
And when you get back, remember to vote for me, I'm tough on crime and I support the death penalty!
How SSL's could easily work, though, would be for the SSL issuer to guarantee the arrestability of the SSL buyer. Then if an SSL owner is involved in a scam ... well the police go pick him up.
I'd like to follow up on this. I aborted a transaction with walmart the other day because their verified by visa process took me to some third party website. The whois was bizarre as well. I eventually figured out that this is really the company that visa is paying to host their verified by visa pages, but what the heck were they thinking?
Offtopic: that is a great sig. Very clever.
What makes you think religion is on the decline? I'm pretty sure that there are more people in every major faith than ever before.
Yeah, I actually would be willing to put more value on the office ... spending 9 waking hours at the office means I have to deal with a 'roommate' there more than I would have to deal with a roommate at home.
You can't just switch if you can't run your favorite apps or take their data with you. It's not like having to upgrade to a better video card or a new box will prevent you from moving your harddrive and its contents along.
:-)
I understand the stress involved with kids, but that's a different kind of stress. Much more rewarding than work-stress.
I've worked in a private office, a not so private office, shared an office, and worked in an open floor plan.
The best option i've seen is where we had some communal computers with a standard setup that anyone (and groups) could sit down and work at, plus offices for when we needed to work privately. That was fantastic for productivity (having the offices didn't isolate us), yet also was pleasant because we could retreat to the offices to take phone calls, or to work solo when that was more effective. That's the model every development company ought to have in my opinion.
That's hard to come by though. When deciding between having to work surrounded by people with no privacy, vs having an office with privacy, vs having an office with a view, I value it at $10k/year for each step. I'm currently working in the open floor plan with no view, but I took the job because they offered me $20k more than I was making before plus bonus opportunities that may be worth even more. I've also taken a $10k paycut to go from an internal office to an office with a beautiful view (similar work). Totally worth it. That daily pleasantness did so much for my stress level, helping to improve my health, it was great. I'm actually slightly regretting taking the 20k step up right now given the stress of the environment I'm in now, but hopefully the extra money will let me have kids, and that's important enough for me to make the trade off, at least for a while.
Anyway, all in all I'd strongly urge you to consider just how much value your personal space has for you. Consider: how much extra would you pay in rent not to have to deal with a roommate?
Indeed, they really should come out of the closet already.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfODSPIYwpQ
But you can say the same about all the other riots we were being compared to, the exceptions that prove the rule. And I omitted all of the regular sports riots we have because I thought it would be better to compare riots for causes that are mildly reasonable (religion, social justice). But if all you're interested in is who is nuttier, the USA has that won hands down.
Indeed, when was the last time a bunch of people rioted for days in one of our major cities like Los Angeles or Detroit.
http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/d_index.htm
http://www.emergency.com/la-riots.htm
It used to be possible to defend Islam to the right wingers in this country (USA) by saying that the terrorism and violence were coming from a relatively tiny number of the practicers of that faith with a very screwed up idea of what that faith meant. No more. Between the raging violence in France and the widespread violence and death threats coming from these cartoons, who can reasonably defend Islam as nonviolent any more?
The nice thing is that if it doesn't, you can trap it forever in a recursive link search.
The republicans already did that, twice, and look where it got us!
Who paid for the painting of the chapel? The Catholic Church. Where did the Catholic Church get the money? Years of oppressing the masses. It's not that the work itself is bad, but that the funding taints it. It's much the same with Bill Gates fighting 3rd world disease. Am I against fighting 3rd world disease? Of course not, that's a great cause. But would it have been better to have a computer industry without Microsoft that could have innovated so much further, and made even more funds available to fight for the same causes? Most definitely.
Bad moderators bad!
Troll it was certainly not. Flamebait? Maybe. Insightful more likely. Guess it tweaked some moderator where it hurt.
Go get'em meta-mods!
However, on the downside for religion, none of those things required religion, and were, sadly, the result of religious exploitation: the art and science done by religious men was done on the backs of peasant laborers who had no choice but to tithe their hard work to the church under threat of violence. And one could easily argue, and surely most thinking people would agree, that all of those fields would have advanced much faster without religion to get in the way.
Religion is not all monster, nor all angel. But it is made up of significant amounts of monster, very little angel, and I'd much rather associate myself with those in favor of abolishing all monstrous practices than those who have a built a long historical record of encouraging them.