This is true, but you would be surprised of how difficult it can be to become a citizen in some countries.
The traditional immigrant target countries (such as the USA, Canada) are better in granting citizenship as they have long established traditions and procedures and a well defined path in regard to it.
Other countries though can be a bit crazy. My native country Ireland has a fairly bad citizenship path that basically boils down to "at the minister of foreign affairs discretion".
Switzerland requires (or at least used to) that your citizenship is put up for vote in the town you live.
And those are two European countries.
The problem is that such procedures rarely impact the people who make the laws or the vast vast majority of voters, so reform is never much of a priority.
You may not realize this, but if as an immigrant in a different country you will be losing rights in a way. Citizens, especially natural born ones have more rights in a country than non citizens.
You would be losing your right to vote, you would have a risk of deportation or not being able to renew for committing a crime that may not be all the serious for a citizen. You will probably have to submit a lot of documentation to your target country.
If you don't like your rights in the UK (which is one of the better countries to live it), just wait until your very ability to stay living where you are is basically at the whim of some bureaucrat.
Of course if you are immigrating from a country that is actually oppressive, you won't mind it.
I am not saying it is difficult to be live in a foreign country, I am just saying if you are someone who is so afraid of big brother, perhaps living in a foreign land is not for you.
Good enough is the important bit. Most people don't care about what metric you are using. It looks as good as regular HD programming on the what is now the standard 30-40" television. So when it comes to choosing how to watch a movie, the easy good enough way will win.
Maybe when everyone has 60" TVs , higher definition will be needed.
It is not just downloading to your computer that is the competition. TV Providers are in this market now too.
Most cable companies provide movies on demand in HD the same time they are released on DVD/Blu- ray.
They are easy to use, no need to go anywhere or wait for a disk to arrive in the mail. Just click a few buttons on your remote and you are watching within seconds. I think that is much more of a factor than other things.
On the other hand, (and this is going to sound extremely lazy), you don't have to get off the couch to change the game disk.
I sometimes play the same game for a week at a time because I am too lazy to go the 10 feet to change the disk. I can turn the console on and off without getting up. If only you could load all the disks into the damn thing.
Really the commodore 64 met all your requirements? Really? Do yourself a favor, take of the rose tinted glasses, and play a modern game for a while. You can pause the game and wait for half an hour before you can play it if it makes you more comfortable.
Well "Good enough" for now. The last update to consoles brought HD compatibility with the now standard HD TV, and good use of internet connection. Without both of those consoles would look like backward technology.
But we certainly haven't reached good enough for gaming in general. Games do look good enough, but the worlds they simulate need more power. For example, go to the top of a building in GTA IV and look into a street in the distance, it is empty. That game does a good job of having an illusion of a busy city, but it really is just that. Four blocks away from you there is nothing.
Wouldn't it be great if every brick in every building was simulated, and having ten million entities walking around the city with you, rather than the 50 odd that follow you around at the moment.
Of course you don't need all this to have a fun game, some of the better games on the 360 are geometry wars and braid, both of which are 2D. And the success of the Wii speaks for itself.
But I think it would be sad if the development of more immersive environments stalled here.
You know current paper comes if different sizes too.
I'm sure you will still be able to get the small one.
This makes a lot of sense. I have the current smaller one and it is great for books, but it definitely needs to be bigger to be used for other applications. Reading a newspaper is kind of weird, be like if newspapers were sold in paperback form.
So small one for pleasure reading ie books that come in paperback size. The bigger one for text books etc.
Of course a resizable ebook reader that you can fold and crumple is what we all really want.
Casino gambling is one matter, but sports betting is a different beast again.
How is buying a stock based on belief of increase in value different to looking at the odds on a sporting event and placing a bet on the basis that you think the odds are wrong?
Some exchanges let you sell bets and even a bookie will allow you to bet against. The odds on sporting events rarely stay the same.
So where does betting exchange websites fall into this? Sites like betfair operate on the basis of a market every transaction or bet has a buyer and a seller.
The odds are determined by what the market dictates.
Interestingly some of these sites (like betfair) market themselves as betting websites while others which do the same thing are calling themselves prediction markets - see intrade.
The text to speech bit could do with some sort of markup though. Despite the author's guild claim to the contrary, text to speech is very machine like and monotonous, it could do with some tags like <scared> or <angry> to get some emotion going.
well they probably still have that golf club for the publicity stunt a while back, so they should send one guy out on space walk and have him start swinging.
It is a pity though. This makes music fit into the frequency range that is compressing it. It could kill any music that uses a lot of symbol sounds, as they sound like crap in a highly compressed format.
If the sudden death penalties run on (And I've seen it happen, One of the World Cup semi finals I think) over that time, then they just cut to the next show and give you a ticker-tape detail over the next show.
Well that is not good at all from watching sport perspective, that was probably ITV wasn't it? They are a really bad sports broadcaster. I remember them cutting to commercial during the last lap of a formula 1 race.
It is funny that with all the control American television has with sports (timeouts or delaying a game for tv commercials - which really kills the flow btw). They still haven't managed to make them actually fit the events into a certain time slot.
Compare this to soccer on European television, no control over the flow of the game, yet it always ends at the same time (for regular league games anyway).
He is only half right. Halo is actually quite good and I only really played PC FPS before I started playing it.
I have only played the third one and it is easily one of the most polished games I have ever played. The mouse is a better controller for FPS, but the Halo is a lot slower than say quake so it doesn't make as much difference (I played Quake III one day after playing halo and it was like flying, the speed didn't feel as right as halo does).
It is one of the few games of this type I have played where strangers actually communicated and planned properly in team based multiplayer. People actually talked!
Also the theater mode was fantastic. It was very interesting to play through a flag capture from numerous angles (I once replayed one where I thought I had done all the work, where in the replay it showed a sniper and others keeping people of my back).
So I would consider getting this if only for the polish, Halo doesn't break any new ground but from what I have seen what it does, it does well.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true, but you would be surprised of how difficult it can be to become a citizen in some countries.
The traditional immigrant target countries (such as the USA, Canada) are better in granting citizenship as they have long established traditions and procedures and a well defined path in regard to it.
Other countries though can be a bit crazy. My native country Ireland has a fairly bad citizenship path that basically boils down to "at the minister of foreign affairs discretion".
Switzerland requires (or at least used to) that your citizenship is put up for vote in the town you live.
And those are two European countries.
The problem is that such procedures rarely impact the people who make the laws or the vast vast majority of voters, so reform is never much of a priority.
You may not realize this, but if as an immigrant in a different country you will be losing rights in a way. Citizens, especially natural born ones have more rights in a country than non citizens.
You would be losing your right to vote, you would have a risk of deportation or not being able to renew for committing a crime that may not be all the serious for a citizen. You will probably have to submit a lot of documentation to your target country.
If you don't like your rights in the UK (which is one of the better countries to live it), just wait until your very ability to stay living where you are is basically at the whim of some bureaucrat.
Of course if you are immigrating from a country that is actually oppressive, you won't mind it.
I am not saying it is difficult to be live in a foreign country, I am just saying if you are someone who is so afraid of big brother, perhaps living in a foreign land is not for you.
that blond chick with the low cut blouse and high cut skirt reading a teleprompter - that's news.
Shepard Smith???
Just release it already!
Good enough is the important bit. Most people don't care about what metric you are using. It looks as good as regular HD programming on the what is now the standard 30-40" television. So when it comes to choosing how to watch a movie, the easy good enough way will win.
Maybe when everyone has 60" TVs , higher definition will be needed.
It is not just downloading to your computer that is the competition. TV Providers are in this market now too.
Most cable companies provide movies on demand in HD the same time they are released on DVD/Blu- ray.
They are easy to use, no need to go anywhere or wait for a disk to arrive in the mail. Just click a few buttons on your remote and you are watching within seconds. I think that is much more of a factor than other things.
On the other hand, (and this is going to sound extremely lazy), you don't have to get off the couch to change the game disk.
I sometimes play the same game for a week at a time because I am too lazy to go the 10 feet to change the disk. I can turn the console on and off without getting up. If only you could load all the disks into the damn thing.
Really the commodore 64 met all your requirements? Really? Do yourself a favor, take of the rose tinted glasses, and play a modern game for a while. You can pause the game and wait for half an hour before you can play it if it makes you more comfortable.
Well "Good enough" for now. The last update to consoles brought HD compatibility with the now standard HD TV, and good use of internet connection. Without both of those consoles would look like backward technology.
But we certainly haven't reached good enough for gaming in general. Games do look good enough, but the worlds they simulate need more power.
For example, go to the top of a building in GTA IV and look into a street in the distance, it is empty. That game does a good job of having an illusion of a busy city, but it really is just that. Four blocks away from you there is nothing.
Wouldn't it be great if every brick in every building was simulated, and having ten million entities walking around the city with you, rather than the 50 odd that follow you around at the moment.
Of course you don't need all this to have a fun game, some of the better games on the 360 are geometry wars and braid, both of which are 2D. And the success of the Wii speaks for itself.
But I think it would be sad if the development of more immersive environments stalled here.
Does the American Revolution not count as a radical political transformation? Federal republics were not common in 1776.
No no they are building the solar train, the numbers add up.
Thank you for that, really missed it in the summary.
You know current paper comes if different sizes too.
I'm sure you will still be able to get the small one.
This makes a lot of sense. I have the current smaller one and it is great for books, but it definitely needs to be bigger to be used for other applications. Reading a newspaper is kind of weird, be like if newspapers were sold in paperback form.
So small one for pleasure reading ie books that come in paperback size. The bigger one for text books etc.
Of course a resizable ebook reader that you can fold and crumple is what we all really want.
Casino gambling is one matter, but sports betting is a different beast again.
How is buying a stock based on belief of increase in value different to looking at the odds on a sporting event and placing a bet on the basis that you think the odds are wrong?
Some exchanges let you sell bets and even a bookie will allow you to bet against. The odds on sporting events rarely stay the same.
So where does betting exchange websites fall into this?
Sites like betfair operate on the basis of a market every transaction or bet has a buyer and a seller.
The odds are determined by what the market dictates.
Interestingly some of these sites (like betfair) market themselves as betting websites while others which do the same thing are calling themselves prediction markets - see intrade.
Well verizon are selling something like that
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/vzhub/overview.jsp
In fairness if the pump fails on a service station, I'd give it a week before someone digs a hole and uses a bucket.
ah easy, blink would be said extremely quickly, whole sentence in one second. Marquee would be a loud street salesman sort of tone.
Ah so it does exist.
Is this widely used? I will confess to not knowing about it.
Any example out there?
The text to speech bit could do with some sort of markup though. Despite the author's guild claim to the contrary, text to speech is very machine like and monotonous, it could do with some tags like <scared> or <angry> to get some emotion going.
well they probably still have that golf club for the publicity stunt a while back, so they should send one guy out on space walk and have him start swinging.
It is a pity though. This makes music fit into the frequency range that is compressing it. It could kill any music that uses a lot of symbol sounds, as they sound like crap in a highly compressed format.
If the sudden death penalties run on (And I've seen it happen, One of the World Cup semi finals I think) over that time, then they just cut to the next show and give you a ticker-tape detail over the next show.
Well that is not good at all from watching sport perspective, that was probably ITV wasn't it? They are a really bad sports broadcaster. I remember them cutting to commercial during the last lap of a formula 1 race.
It is funny that with all the control American television has with sports (timeouts or delaying a game for tv commercials - which really kills the flow btw). They still haven't managed to make them actually fit the events into a certain time slot.
Compare this to soccer on European television, no control over the flow of the game, yet it always ends at the same time (for regular league games anyway).
He is only half right. Halo is actually quite good and I only really played PC FPS before I started playing it.
I have only played the third one and it is easily one of the most polished games I have ever played. The mouse is a better controller for FPS, but the Halo is a lot slower than say quake so it doesn't make as much difference (I played Quake III one day after playing halo and it was like flying, the speed didn't feel as right as halo does).
It is one of the few games of this type I have played where strangers actually communicated and planned properly in team based multiplayer. People actually talked!
Also the theater mode was fantastic. It was very interesting to play through a flag capture from numerous angles (I once replayed one where I thought I had done all the work, where in the replay it showed a sniper and others keeping people of my back).
So I would consider getting this if only for the polish, Halo doesn't break any new ground but from what I have seen what it does, it does well.