Link/proof? Are you saying it didn't block cheaters? You say it spuriously blocked people (assuming they were not cheaters, I guess?) I played tons of FPS games for years, and found I got kicked far more by annoyed humans ("you're using an aimbot, cheater!" >disconnect (I wasn't)) than ever by punkbuster. If it wasn't working, I'd love to see info on this.
Only on slashdot (or democraticunderground.com) would this sort of worship be considered 'insightful'. Yes, clearly if we would "just get out of the way" his holy goodness would just shine upon us and lead us into a Golden Age.
- Never mind that he was 'created' in one of the worst political sewers in the country. To suggest that his squeaky-cleanness is genuine despite being somewhat uncharacteristic of Chicago politico's is...charitable, to put it best. - Never mind that his reign has been marked by a massive increase in the opacity of government and power of lobbyists, in particular that of the banking/financial sectors (in direct opposition to his early promises) - Never mind that his government has failed to pass a single budget that wasn't an emergency one, or that US budget annual deficits are TRIPLE that of the years 2002-2008. Yes, I know congress is the one controlling pursestrings. - Never mind that not a single responsible person has been punished for the outright fraud that led to the greatest economic disaster since the great depression - Never mind that Guantanamo is cheerfully still open for business.
Trust me, we would be DELIGHTED for him to leave and screw up, er, "run" another country. Perhaps something smaller - a little country of 22 million, geopolitically nearly irrelevant - would have been more his speed, considering that he had less political experience than Sarah Palin at his election.
You wouldn't happen to have been a Nobel voter, would you?
(Not to mention, why the FUCK would we work "for the world"?)
"Are carpenters allowed to establish guidelines for how surgeons will do heart surgery? No, they lack the professional competence so they are not accepted as having standing in the matter. "
Of course, which is why I point to the root problem being our handing the control of everything to politicians. Sure, this is particularly egregious, but is it any less ridiculous to have legislators - the absurd majority of which are either lawyers or professional politicians who've done little else - telling us how we run our businesses? How banks 'should' operate? How high doorknobs should be? With whom we can be friends?
No, we've said CLEARLY that we wanted a state that would wrap us in big fluffy cushions and make all the hard decisions for us. It's absolutely NO SURPRISE that the state ultimately is now making stupid decisions and decisions that we don't want them to make, and we have little recourse to get rid of them.
....as long as we're allowed to continue to spend money we don't have, why not?
Of course, I suspect that when you ask the question differently, you're going to get a very different response: "Assuming that whatever % of budget goes to NASA comes directly out of services you receive, what % of budget should NASA get?"
Your comparison would bear more weight if it wasn't FOX that was the first 'mainstream' media organization that brought this up to the public.
Before that, it was only internet commentators and news sites like Little Green Footballs and Drudge, as I recall.
Reading the wiki about it makes it sound like there was immediate coverage from the bulk of national news organizations, which is absolutely not true. I was PART of the discussion on LGF and it was abundantly clear that: a) the bulk of news organizations either didn't want to touch it at all or if they did reference it, it was "oh look what the internet crazies are coming up with just before the election" (to be fair, our conversation on LGF was "look what crap CBS has manufactured just before the election"), and b) the ONLY national news organization that was interested in investigating was Fox.
This isn't a ranking of performance, it's a ranking of 'number of searches', which (for whatever it's actually worth, which is probably ad revenue only) can easily be gamed.
"Microsoft still attracted 268.6 million unique searchers in December, and Yandex just 74.4 million, which suggests that Yandex aficionados tend to use their search engine more intensively."...which both points to MS's success in jamming it down people's throats as the 'first search' in any MS device (for chrissakes in Win7 google isn't even OFFERED as one of the search options - you have to download an extension to IE to set google as the default search, lol), AND likewise suggests that the Yandex results are in fact being gamed somehow.
The Chinese results are simple, it's in CHINESE, which has billions of native users. Google dominates the english speaking world, and I guess Yandex gets the Russians.
One might point out too that they're the only news agency that's been BROUGHT to court to defend their bullshit statements.
You don't have to search far to find outright lies being promulgated by EVERY news network.
Somehow, most of the conservatives I know recognize that all networks are largely full of lies. Yet the liberals I know assert that it's ONLY FOX that lies.
While I understand your apparent need to "blame Republicans", there is a fairly fundamental principle involved here.
The US Constitution art 1, sec 8 specifically authorizes the government to "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".
Clearly, this was to both facilitate communication and raise revenue for the government. Further, it makes sense in principle; given the Fed's role in adjudicating interstate issues and this is quite essentially an interstate subject.
HOWEVER... There is a critical and subtle point at which the government is no longer providing a needed universal service, but is instead competing with healthy commercial entities. When the government suddenly participates, that competition is no longer fair, as the government can use tax revenues, favorable law, and a whole host of competitive measures to which businesses don't have access.
While it technically lies outside the mandate of the USC (which is, after all, limited to designating routes and offices), I agree that it is a valuable and necessary service for the Federal Government to provide basic postal service. (Personally, they could go to 3- or even 2-day-a-week delivery, as far as I'm concerned.)
However, these services, as a function of government, need to be provided at-cost. The Postal Service should NOT be adding other services (urgent delivery, special handling, etc.), especially things that are already amply provided-for in the market.
Hm, how many businesses has RS run? I'm talking real businesses, with 100+ employees, not just incorporated DBAs for the collection of patent money or consultant paychecks.
In that case, he should STFU.
The root cause of the TBTF issue was...the rating agencies. How, you say? The rating agencies were given the imprimatur of a government agency in legislation in the early 20th century - they were credited IN LAW as being 'the official' agencies worth using. This naturally meant that people treated them like government agencies, when in fact they were commercial businesses with all the tendencies toward greed and (when handed a government monopoly) indolence.
Eliminate them, and suddenly the market HAS to revert to actual capitalist economics: there IS no 'golden', unsullied source of ratings, and investors have to evaluate their investments or use someone they actually trust. Ultimately, the amounts risked are much more carefully invested (or, if not, lost WITHOUT recourse to government - ie taxpayer - assets).
Let's apply the "look at all the blacks in prison, it MUST be racism" logic another way:
What % of inmates are male? 90%? 95%?
CLEARLY, that's a result of sexism on the part of the arresting officers, judges, juries and the entire system are biased against men, because if they weren't, a majority of the prison population would be women, right?
The biggest challenge is explaining who/how/why anyone would NEED a gesture-based interface.
Sure, we all thought Minority Report looked cool with the flying window-thingy, but honestly, Mr Cruise could have 'flipped through' his data far, far more easily sitting at a desk with trivial motions of a mouse instead of giant arm-wavings and calisthenics.
Plus, then he'd get to SIT, which is a little more conducive to surviving the 10+ hour days most of us spend staring at a little computer screen.
It might sound callous, and it is: if you're living in the street, begging handouts, you're a great big human parasite. If you breed - and considering that the odds are mightily stacked that your child will be at best another ward of the state, at worst an actual predator - your contribution is significantly negative.
"There but for the grace of God go I" doesn't change that basic fact, it just personalizes the issue, so the self-interested of us want social safety nets 'just in case' they end up there.
So you're asserting that the punishment would be excessive? How about if we extrapolate ridiculously the other direction then, too? Why not remove all punishment for everything? I'm sure things would be a lot better, right?
In the first place, if you think the US is 'free-market capitalism' you're lying either to yourself or everyone else.
Free markets lead to fraud and monopolies/collusion. Government-controlled systems ALSO lead to fraud and collusion, while delivering far worse results to the average consumer.
Neither system is perfect. On the whole, Capitalism has a far-better track record for delivering a higher standard of living to the people generally.
(Personally, the problem here is a complete lack of penalty; Joe Trader commits fraud, he gets fired and bank has to pay a trivial penalty. Joe might even get thrown to the wolves. At WORST, the bank/institution closes and the corporate management all just shift jobs to some other company. We need draconian penalties to restore trust in the system.)
I know some people are morally against capital punishment, but if the penalty for theft of >$1 million was a capital offense, it would happen a lot less.
Think of the impact this would have, if many of the data-recording points for temperature were slowly surrounded by urbanization or in the 'heat shadow' of urban areas?
He makes a compelling case, the refutation of which has been on the order of "of course they considered this, they're experts"...when there's no trace of such analysis or correction applied to East Anglia conclusions or IPCC reports through at least 2005 (after which I stopped bothering to read them).
"We're not portraying the revered Hagia Sophia mosque of Istanbul (which, btw ISN'T EVEN A MOSQUE since it was secularized in 1931)...no, we're portraying the Hagia Sophia CHURCH, the most holy church in Christendom until it was conquered by 'the religion of peace' in 1453."
Slashdot Mirror
Link/proof? Are you saying it didn't block cheaters? You say it spuriously blocked people (assuming they were not cheaters, I guess?)
I played tons of FPS games for years, and found I got kicked far more by annoyed humans ("you're using an aimbot, cheater!" >disconnect (I wasn't)) than ever by punkbuster. If it wasn't working, I'd love to see info on this.
"Not "was it right or was it wrong?", but "why did I just kill a group of civilians on purpose?"."
When cowards insist on fighting a war and using women and children as body shields, please, enlighten us what YOUR solution is?
"Warrior culture" my ass.
Only on slashdot (or democraticunderground.com) would this sort of worship be considered 'insightful'. Yes, clearly if we would "just get out of the way" his holy goodness would just shine upon us and lead us into a Golden Age.
- Never mind that he was 'created' in one of the worst political sewers in the country. To suggest that his squeaky-cleanness is genuine despite being somewhat uncharacteristic of Chicago politico's is...charitable, to put it best.
- Never mind that his reign has been marked by a massive increase in the opacity of government and power of lobbyists, in particular that of the banking/financial sectors (in direct opposition to his early promises)
- Never mind that his government has failed to pass a single budget that wasn't an emergency one, or that US budget annual deficits are TRIPLE that of the years 2002-2008. Yes, I know congress is the one controlling pursestrings.
- Never mind that not a single responsible person has been punished for the outright fraud that led to the greatest economic disaster since the great depression
- Never mind that Guantanamo is cheerfully still open for business.
Trust me, we would be DELIGHTED for him to leave and screw up, er, "run" another country. Perhaps something smaller - a little country of 22 million, geopolitically nearly irrelevant - would have been more his speed, considering that he had less political experience than Sarah Palin at his election.
You wouldn't happen to have been a Nobel voter, would you?
(Not to mention, why the FUCK would we work "for the world"?)
"Are carpenters allowed to establish guidelines for how surgeons will do heart surgery? No, they lack the professional competence so they are not accepted as having standing in the matter. "
Of course, which is why I point to the root problem being our handing the control of everything to politicians. Sure, this is particularly egregious, but is it any less ridiculous to have legislators - the absurd majority of which are either lawyers or professional politicians who've done little else - telling us how we run our businesses? How banks 'should' operate? How high doorknobs should be? With whom we can be friends?
No, we've said CLEARLY that we wanted a state that would wrap us in big fluffy cushions and make all the hard decisions for us. It's absolutely NO SURPRISE that the state ultimately is now making stupid decisions and decisions that we don't want them to make, and we have little recourse to get rid of them.
....as long as we're allowed to continue to spend money we don't have, why not?
Of course, I suspect that when you ask the question differently, you're going to get a very different response:
"Assuming that whatever % of budget goes to NASA comes directly out of services you receive, what % of budget should NASA get?"
Your comparison would bear more weight if it wasn't FOX that was the first 'mainstream' media organization that brought this up to the public.
Before that, it was only internet commentators and news sites like Little Green Footballs and Drudge, as I recall.
Reading the wiki about it makes it sound like there was immediate coverage from the bulk of national news organizations, which is absolutely not true. I was PART of the discussion on LGF and it was abundantly clear that:
a) the bulk of news organizations either didn't want to touch it at all or if they did reference it, it was "oh look what the internet crazies are coming up with just before the election" (to be fair, our conversation on LGF was "look what crap CBS has manufactured just before the election"), and
b) the ONLY national news organization that was interested in investigating was Fox.
This isn't a ranking of performance, it's a ranking of 'number of searches', which (for whatever it's actually worth, which is probably ad revenue only) can easily be gamed.
"Microsoft still attracted 268.6 million unique searchers in December, and Yandex just 74.4 million, which suggests that Yandex aficionados tend to use their search engine more intensively." ...which both points to MS's success in jamming it down people's throats as the 'first search' in any MS device (for chrissakes in Win7 google isn't even OFFERED as one of the search options - you have to download an extension to IE to set google as the default search, lol), AND likewise suggests that the Yandex results are in fact being gamed somehow.
The Chinese results are simple, it's in CHINESE, which has billions of native users.
Google dominates the english speaking world, and I guess Yandex gets the Russians.
One might point out too that they're the only news agency that's been BROUGHT to court to defend their bullshit statements.
You don't have to search far to find outright lies being promulgated by EVERY news network.
Somehow, most of the conservatives I know recognize that all networks are largely full of lies.
Yet the liberals I know assert that it's ONLY FOX that lies.
Which do you suppose is closer to the truth?
So...is that the fancy new word for "hypocrite"?
While I understand your apparent need to "blame Republicans", there is a fairly fundamental principle involved here.
The US Constitution art 1, sec 8 specifically authorizes the government to "To establish Post Offices and post Roads".
Clearly, this was to both facilitate communication and raise revenue for the government. Further, it makes sense in principle; given the Fed's role in adjudicating interstate issues and this is quite essentially an interstate subject.
HOWEVER...
There is a critical and subtle point at which the government is no longer providing a needed universal service, but is instead competing with healthy commercial entities. When the government suddenly participates, that competition is no longer fair, as the government can use tax revenues, favorable law, and a whole host of competitive measures to which businesses don't have access.
While it technically lies outside the mandate of the USC (which is, after all, limited to designating routes and offices), I agree that it is a valuable and necessary service for the Federal Government to provide basic postal service. (Personally, they could go to 3- or even 2-day-a-week delivery, as far as I'm concerned.)
However, these services, as a function of government, need to be provided at-cost.
The Postal Service should NOT be adding other services (urgent delivery, special handling, etc.), especially things that are already amply provided-for in the market.
...I hear you can play Dwarf Fortress in native mode on it?
You entirely missed my point.
I'm saying that population statistics of prisons are not ipso facto proof of racism (as they seem to be often used).
Who said there was anything wrong with black people?
Hm, how many businesses has RS run? I'm talking real businesses, with 100+ employees, not just incorporated DBAs for the collection of patent money or consultant paychecks.
In that case, he should STFU.
The root cause of the TBTF issue was...the rating agencies. How, you say? The rating agencies were given the imprimatur of a government agency in legislation in the early 20th century - they were credited IN LAW as being 'the official' agencies worth using. This naturally meant that people treated them like government agencies, when in fact they were commercial businesses with all the tendencies toward greed and (when handed a government monopoly) indolence.
Eliminate them, and suddenly the market HAS to revert to actual capitalist economics: there IS no 'golden', unsullied source of ratings, and investors have to evaluate their investments or use someone they actually trust. Ultimately, the amounts risked are much more carefully invested (or, if not, lost WITHOUT recourse to government - ie taxpayer - assets).
Let's apply the "look at all the blacks in prison, it MUST be racism" logic another way:
What % of inmates are male? 90%? 95%?
CLEARLY, that's a result of sexism on the part of the arresting officers, judges, juries and the entire system are biased against men, because if they weren't, a majority of the prison population would be women, right?
Sounds stupid in that context doesn't it?
Ask yourself why.
The biggest challenge is explaining who/how/why anyone would NEED a gesture-based interface.
Sure, we all thought Minority Report looked cool with the flying window-thingy, but honestly, Mr Cruise could have 'flipped through' his data far, far more easily sitting at a desk with trivial motions of a mouse instead of giant arm-wavings and calisthenics.
Plus, then he'd get to SIT, which is a little more conducive to surviving the 10+ hour days most of us spend staring at a little computer screen.
Because oral exams are as much work for the teachers as the students?
Sorry, I meant to "the people that matter".
It might sound callous, and it is: if you're living in the street, begging handouts, you're a great big human parasite. If you breed - and considering that the odds are mightily stacked that your child will be at best another ward of the state, at worst an actual predator - your contribution is significantly negative.
"There but for the grace of God go I" doesn't change that basic fact, it just personalizes the issue, so the self-interested of us want social safety nets 'just in case' they end up there.
....people who can make a pile of money from greater IT investment, advocate greater IT investment. /facepalm /news
I'm guessing Clinton read The White Plague at some point too.
It would explain his goal to f*ck every woman he met!
So you're asserting that the punishment would be excessive?
How about if we extrapolate ridiculously the other direction then, too?
Why not remove all punishment for everything? I'm sure things would be a lot better, right?
Bullshit.
In the first place, if you think the US is 'free-market capitalism' you're lying either to yourself or everyone else.
Free markets lead to fraud and monopolies/collusion.
Government-controlled systems ALSO lead to fraud and collusion, while delivering far worse results to the average consumer.
Neither system is perfect. On the whole, Capitalism has a far-better track record for delivering a higher standard of living to the people generally.
(Personally, the problem here is a complete lack of penalty; Joe Trader commits fraud, he gets fired and bank has to pay a trivial penalty. Joe might even get thrown to the wolves. At WORST, the bank/institution closes and the corporate management all just shift jobs to some other company.
We need draconian penalties to restore trust in the system.)
I know some people are morally against capital punishment, but if the penalty for theft of >$1 million was a capital offense, it would happen a lot less.
Think of the impact this would have, if many of the data-recording points for temperature were slowly surrounded by urbanization or in the 'heat shadow' of urban areas?
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/surftmp/surftemp.htm
He makes a compelling case, the refutation of which has been on the order of "of course they considered this, they're experts"...when there's no trace of such analysis or correction applied to East Anglia conclusions or IPCC reports through at least 2005 (after which I stopped bothering to read them).
Why to be skeptical of the findings?
The main reason they doubt it is because it contradicts quasi-religous dogma.
I'd love it if Lego replied:
"We're not portraying the revered Hagia Sophia mosque of Istanbul (which, btw ISN'T EVEN A MOSQUE since it was secularized in 1931)...no, we're portraying the Hagia Sophia CHURCH, the most holy church in Christendom until it was conquered by 'the religion of peace' in 1453."
What's "whiny bitch" in Byzantine?