On the other hand, consider yesterday's vote for Alito. If you were elected as a Democrat, you're pretty much assured that Alito would act to undermine values that your constituents hold dear. There's no way you could reasonably justify voting him into a position of such power, to do so would be morally abhorrent. So voting against Alito is the expected correct course of action. Now reverse the positions and view from the perspective of a Republican Senator.
Now consider that John Roberts confirmation was 78-22 with half of the Democrats voting for confirmation: a less polarizing figure, a less polarizing vote.
If anything, I'd say these two votes show that our Senators are doing their jobs as expected. It's just unfortunate that the president chose such a severely polarizing figure for a position as important as the Supreme Court. I think our system of government would be much better off if pretty much everything required a 2/3rd or 3/4 vote to pass.
In fairness to most members of congress, most of them are ancient enough that when they took up smoking, it wasn't yet common knowledge that smoking was dangerous, in fact it was generally seen as beneficial (as a stimulant improving the concentration ala caffeine today... I'm just waiting for the starbucks lawsuit over the heart attacks their product causes).
The key problem with this argument is that our society has roughly split down the middle on some pretty key issues. The things that are makeing Republicans hate Democrats and vice-versa just aren't going to see one side acknowledging the other as right.
Abortion, preemptive war, tax the rich vs tax the poor, social welfare programs, socialized medicine, environment preservation: people who hold strong beliefs about these things are relatively unlikely to find themselves acknowledging the other side as right or themselves wrong on these issues.
With other, relatively less inflammatory issues, I think you'll find that people are open to debate. But as long as there are issues like these that are considered 'unsettled', the parties will continue to be able to divide us on them quite effectively, and calm debate about less divisive issues will essentially be buried under the weight of these more dramatic ones. So long as we have so many things where it seems like the position of one side or the other can be taken as evil it is going to be hard to get people to take things calmly. And frankly, they shouldn't. You shouldn't sit quietly debating when your opponent is evil, you should be making a loud noise to make sure people are attending!
The danger is that if this stuff was commercially viable, you could go out, kill a dozen whales, find the one that had some vomit in its stomach, stick that vomit in a saltwater tank for ten years, and sell the result.
In some ways, it's a lot like forbidding the sale of elephant ivory: after all, you can collect the tusks of dead elephants from the secret elephant burial grounds with no harm to the elephant population, right?
Ah, but you have to understand the fun side of this stuff: it's something that you can kill whales for. Take a whale, rip it open, pull out whale vomit, float vomit in sun exposed salt water tank for 10 years, sell for massive profit. Fun!
Nearly every game launched in the last year actually has options that will look better or be more playable (meaninful increase in framerate) with the best card setup you can buy. Whether these cards allow you to crank your resolution to 1920x1200 (Even civ4 is unplayable on my goforce 6800 at that res) or turn on all the eye candy, there's something nice you can get in nearly every case.
It seems likely that given the increasing complexity, the error rate is going to rise proportionally. I mean, how many errors do you expect in a 100,000 transistor chip vs a 100,000,000 transistor chip?
The question is not how they are in real life, but how they were portrayed in the game. Cops are quite clearly not always, and IMO not even more often than not the good guys. But the question is who is the good guys in the cops-and-robbers game played by children.
Please get re-addicted, these games are my living! I sell the very coolest of equipment on ebay. I've been averaging just a little over 12k per month for the last 3 years. It only takes about 1500 hours per year, which is a nice margin smaller than the typical 1600-2000 most people work.
The point being that they will just move to a rental model: what you buy in the store isn't a game: it's more like the key to a rental car. Sure, you can keep the keys, give them to someone else if you like even. Just don't expect the keys to start the rental car after the rental expires. So the disc you buy in the store won't be the game, it will just be the 'data associated with the game rental'. Which you own, and can do whatever you like with. But it won't be much of a game unless you pay the rental fee.
On the other side of this discussion: imagine that Hertz rents you a car for 3 days. On day 4, you keep the car, but Hertz doesn't collect it's unreturned cars any more, but instead has an ignition disabling device that prevents them being used after the rental period. Legal or not?
And if legal, why shouldn't a software provider be able to rent you software under the same terms?
The question is: what would the company do if the original purchaser of a piece of their media called up and complained that their code was already activated?
Typically, the policy is: send in your original media, and we'll send you a replacement and a new code for $5 or the cost of shipping.
As long as companies are stuck with those policies, there won't be a problem for the 2nd hand market. And they will be stuck with those policies forever because it is oooohhhh so easy to steal activation codes out of the boxes on store shelves.
What we'll more likely see is that the game bits will essentially become free, and activation codes or monthly fees will be 100% of the business model (ala world of warcraft, where you can basically get the box for free on sale various places with rebate, but the $15/month is where they really make their money).
In addition to the other poster's comments, another reason that games degrade is popularity: If you're playing diablo 2 multiplayer today, you're not having the same experience as playing it 3 years ago when it was popular.
Indeed. In particular, it's unclear where the transistor budget would have come from for any sort of major innovation that none of the companies had thought of individually, yet could come up with as a group.
Now the market backing of 10 major companies working in concert might have made something sell, but technologically, there's just no reason to believe there would have been any magic.
On the other hand, it would be difficult to impossible to make a list of the 'dirty 3' most extreme right wing members of the UCLA faculty. So it could just be a smaple bias.
Experience spending time with those who make the big bucks in business and other fields suggests that in fact those who don't make big bucks teaching are in fact the best and the brightest. I mean, have you met your boss?
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, consider yesterday's vote for Alito. If you were elected as a Democrat, you're pretty much assured that Alito would act to undermine values that your constituents hold dear. There's no way you could reasonably justify voting him into a position of such power, to do so would be morally abhorrent. So voting against Alito is the expected correct course of action. Now reverse the positions and view from the perspective of a Republican Senator.
Now consider that John Roberts confirmation was 78-22 with half of the Democrats voting for confirmation: a less polarizing figure, a less polarizing vote.
If anything, I'd say these two votes show that our Senators are doing their jobs as expected. It's just unfortunate that the president chose such a severely polarizing figure for a position as important as the Supreme Court. I think our system of government would be much better off if pretty much everything required a 2/3rd or 3/4 vote to pass.
In fairness to most members of congress, most of them are ancient enough that when they took up smoking, it wasn't yet common knowledge that smoking was dangerous, in fact it was generally seen as beneficial (as a stimulant improving the concentration ala caffeine today ... I'm just waiting for the starbucks lawsuit over the heart attacks their product causes).
http://results.about.com/simpsons/#1
"Pfft...You can use facts to prove anything that's even REMOTELY true!"
The key problem with this argument is that our society has roughly split down the middle on some pretty key issues. The things that are makeing Republicans hate Democrats and vice-versa just aren't going to see one side acknowledging the other as right.
Abortion, preemptive war, tax the rich vs tax the poor, social welfare programs, socialized medicine, environment preservation: people who hold strong beliefs about these things are relatively unlikely to find themselves acknowledging the other side as right or themselves wrong on these issues.
With other, relatively less inflammatory issues, I think you'll find that people are open to debate. But as long as there are issues like these that are considered 'unsettled', the parties will continue to be able to divide us on them quite effectively, and calm debate about less divisive issues will essentially be buried under the weight of these more dramatic ones. So long as we have so many things where it seems like the position of one side or the other can be taken as evil it is going to be hard to get people to take things calmly. And frankly, they shouldn't. You shouldn't sit quietly debating when your opponent is evil, you should be making a loud noise to make sure people are attending!
As I posted elsewhere:9 &cid=14557197
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17505
The danger is that if this stuff was commercially viable, you could go out, kill a dozen whales, find the one that had some vomit in its stomach, stick that vomit in a saltwater tank for ten years, and sell the result.
In some ways, it's a lot like forbidding the sale of elephant ivory: after all, you can collect the tusks of dead elephants from the secret elephant burial grounds with no harm to the elephant population, right?
Ah, but you have to understand the fun side of this stuff: it's something that you can kill whales for. Take a whale, rip it open, pull out whale vomit, float vomit in sun exposed salt water tank for 10 years, sell for massive profit. Fun!
Nearly every game launched in the last year actually has options that will look better or be more playable (meaninful increase in framerate) with the best card setup you can buy. Whether these cards allow you to crank your resolution to 1920x1200 (Even civ4 is unplayable on my goforce 6800 at that res) or turn on all the eye candy, there's something nice you can get in nearly every case.
And what bugs me about those commercials. It's actually about 3000 crispy chicken nuggets for the video card, and his wife looks like $200,000.
It seems likely that given the increasing complexity, the error rate is going to rise proportionally. I mean, how many errors do you expect in a 100,000 transistor chip vs a 100,000,000 transistor chip?
At least 136 in the Athlon.
: www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers _and_tech_docs/25759.pdf+amd+athlon+errata&hl=en&c lient=firefox-a
e _papers_and_tech_docs/25759.pdf
Google html of the pdf:
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:HFDm3zBojEcJ
Amd's original (pdf!)
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/whit
The question is not how they are in real life, but how they were portrayed in the game. Cops are quite clearly not always, and IMO not even more often than not the good guys. But the question is who is the good guys in the cops-and-robbers game played by children.
I didn't say the cops won, I said the cops were the good guys.
Fortunately, there's no problem for you. They're all dupes!
I think the difference was that in that game, the robbers were portrayed as the bad guys.
Please get re-addicted, these games are my living! I sell the very coolest of equipment on ebay. I've been averaging just a little over 12k per month for the last 3 years. It only takes about 1500 hours per year, which is a nice margin smaller than the typical 1600-2000 most people work.
The point being that they will just move to a rental model: what you buy in the store isn't a game: it's more like the key to a rental car. Sure, you can keep the keys, give them to someone else if you like even. Just don't expect the keys to start the rental car after the rental expires. So the disc you buy in the store won't be the game, it will just be the 'data associated with the game rental'. Which you own, and can do whatever you like with. But it won't be much of a game unless you pay the rental fee.
On the other side of this discussion: imagine that Hertz rents you a car for 3 days. On day 4, you keep the car, but Hertz doesn't collect it's unreturned cars any more, but instead has an ignition disabling device that prevents them being used after the rental period. Legal or not?
And if legal, why shouldn't a software provider be able to rent you software under the same terms?
Seconded. Azureus is a horrendous resource hog. Thankfully, I have a windows machine available to run utorrent.
The question is: what would the company do if the original purchaser of a piece of their media called up and complained that their code was already activated?
Typically, the policy is: send in your original media, and we'll send you a replacement and a new code for $5 or the cost of shipping.
As long as companies are stuck with those policies, there won't be a problem for the 2nd hand market. And they will be stuck with those policies forever because it is oooohhhh so easy to steal activation codes out of the boxes on store shelves.
What we'll more likely see is that the game bits will essentially become free, and activation codes or monthly fees will be 100% of the business model (ala world of warcraft, where you can basically get the box for free on sale various places with rebate, but the $15/month is where they really make their money).
In addition to the other poster's comments, another reason that games degrade is popularity: If you're playing diablo 2 multiplayer today, you're not having the same experience as playing it 3 years ago when it was popular.
Indeed. In particular, it's unclear where the transistor budget would have come from for any sort of major innovation that none of the companies had thought of individually, yet could come up with as a group.
Now the market backing of 10 major companies working in concert might have made something sell, but technologically, there's just no reason to believe there would have been any magic.
On the other hand, it would be difficult to impossible to make a list of the 'dirty 3' most extreme right wing members of the UCLA faculty. So it could just be a smaple bias.
Experience spending time with those who make the big bucks in business and other fields suggests that in fact those who don't make big bucks teaching are in fact the best and the brightest. I mean, have you met your boss?
Well, by principle of having replaced all the workers work primarily with robot labor, the workers by your theory will be weaker or stupider.
Beyond that, the wealthy will use either their control of the robot armies, or designer disease.
I suspect that 2x160 is essentially just the cheapest raid solution they could get for performance reasons.