Well, let's see here. The RIAA member companies, when they sign contracts with artists, typically promise some big up-front sum for a number of records to be cut in a specified amount of time-- turns out that this sum is just barely enough to cover expenses and often leaves very little for the artist/band to make a living, forcing them to recoup the difference on live tours (if they have a big enough audience) where the RIAA takes less of a cut. Meanwhile, the record companies take for themselves all reproduction and distribution rights (unless the artist was smart and insisted on keeping those rights), so they have a short leash on their artists while at the same time have the means to harass and financially destroy anyone who dares sample their wares without their express permission.
And that's the recording industry. It often gets worse in motion pictures, where big studios take the American insurance company method of cutting costs-- find every excuse known to man to avoid paying the very people who worked on their blockbuster titles.
These are the people who have the gall to say that they're losing money, and throw up bullshit numbers that essentially say "X downloads of our stuff means X*30 lost sales, therefore all internet downloaders are thieves who owe us X*30000 dollars." Really, you'd think that they'd figure out sooner that treating their own employees/contractors/customers like the filth and grime from Dirty Jobs wouldn't be such a great business strategy?
They picked a fight with a technology that can only grow stronger and faster with time. Honestly, with the new stuff Cisco and Google are putting forward, I can't help but think that this media cartel's comeuppance is here.
Don't even get me started on the authoritarian twits who run MLB and NFL...
1) That might get cost-prohibitive, as games are already multi-million-dollar enterprises. But as a general rule, most companies should stick with the same actor for the same character, or find as close a vocal timbre/cadence equivalent as possible if the original cannot be summoned. Done properly and with the right director, most players might not pick up the differences immediately. But the problem does get compounded when (shudder) sequels come into play.
2) Usually most studios have similar soundproofing standards, and background noise can be cleaned up; the bottom line here is, don't try to trim the audio budget by cutting out the studio you went to last time.
3) Ellen McLain had a comment in Portal where she said that in most voiceover jobs she did, the direction was stultifyingly boring or restrictive, until she started working with Valve on the character of GlaDOS. I'm sure she would be the first to tell any dev house that if they wanted a text-to-speech translator, they could just hire college students at minimum wage (and I'm sure some houses do just that) or, if the characters are sufficiently robotic, they could use a synthesizer. Hey, if it worked for the Invasion of the Gabber Robots...
4) This is apparently a fundamental lesson in acting or performance art of any form: Accents and mannerisms are ornaments. Do not add ornaments to your performance until you have the fundamentals of the piece down. You will hear every good drama and music teacher tell their students this, and if they do not, they should be fired.
I suppose if you want something marginally more efficient, you could use halogen bulbs, unless you don't like the spectra on those either.
Or if you're hardcore, you could try gas-discharge bulbs-- though to be honest, they don't make 'em for the usual Edison socket (heat/power issues and all).
Not only that, Novell would probably have solid cases for laches (as in, Microsoft waited too long) and possibly breach of contract (if Microsoft promised not to sue for patent infringement). Microsoft may have squelched Mono as soon as de Icaza brought it to light, but they didn't for whatever reason, and if they tried to kill it now with their patent portfolio, they will be laughed out of court.
This just in, an east Asian tea consortium responds to activity in Great Britain with a package of prepared C. sinensis leaves and a message reading, "Kindly stop calling this 'your' tea, we've been drinking it for centuries before you started stealing from us."
I guess you're one of those guys who sees the word "desert" and thinks of the Sahara or the lunar surface-- the long and the short of it is, there's no such thing as a lifeless desert. If there's anything decades of environmental awareness (should have) taught us, it's that "plopping" stuff without thinking about how and where can have serious consequences. I'll be among the first to admit that groups like Greenpeace are probably too fanatical to be proposing solutions (rejection of all things nuclear, for example), but there has to come a point where we don't embrace the quick and easy solution without at least giving some thought to all the impacts.
I had a friend tell me once that oil/gas pipelines are beneficial to tundra wildlife because they get a warm place to cozy up to. Seriously. No thought whatsoever about how climate change will affect their habitats, or about how wildlife could starve to death as a result. I suppose it was all good in his head because moose get a free campfire out of the deal before they die.
Technically, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from packaging IE8 (dear God, no) or IE9 as a mandatory update to IE6 and forcing a reboot. Sure, it might require a revision to their policies, and customers might complain, but the Windows Update architecture allows for this.
The only thing preventing them from doing this is all the businesses dependent on IE6-specific intranet and Web applications and unwilling to invest in upgrading to something more standards-compliant. I suppose Microsoft can force the issue and offer an IE6 emulator until they do the upgrade...
You do realize there's this thing called an options dialog, right? For Firefox 3.x, the very first thing the "main" section of the options dialog says:
Startup When Firefox starts (combo box): - Show a blank page - Show my home page (default, unless you tell it to save the session when you quit) - Show my windows and tabs from last time
If you don't want your browser to start where you left off from last time, by all means, pick option 1 or 2.
The "do you want to restore your tabs?" dialog isn't there anymore; in recent releases (3.5+) you get a single window, with a single tab containing an alert message that says, "Well, this is embarrassing...", offering to restore your session or start anew. Nothing stopping you from opening another tab and going to that page you wanted to go to in the first place.
Maybe Opera handles this better by opening your desired page alongside your previous session-- and if you're going to complain about saved sessions, your complaints ought to go to Opera, since they're the ones who pioneered the feature. I haven't tried this with Chrome (I think it destroys the previous session to open that page).
When I declined, it didn't go away and launch the browser, no, it popped up a survey web page, inside a modal dialog which was way too small and could not be scrolled or resized.
Either you were running a build I've never touched, or you got a tainted Firefox, or you actually clicked on an IE pop-up masquerading as a Firefox dialog. I've used the browser pretty much from 1.0RC and I've never seen what you're describing. In any case, your complaints are based on an outdated version anyway, and are therefore moot.
(Disclaimer: I use Chrome on Windows. Primary reason: the ability to kill Flash when I need to.)
I'll be willing to bet that if Amerin starts having problems, they'll blame CWLP and/or the state/muni governments. That argument will stick if they're actually competing in the same market, even if CWLP and the government was only doing what was the most efficient use of resources.
Usually it's a matter of who is running the organization. I'll bet Amerin is run by sociopathic pricks* who care more about their own yachts than Amerin's well-being, and CWLP is run by competent (if possibly boring) managers.
The best argument against privatizing a public service or asset is usually that the private sector will abuse the fact that the public needs that service or asset. There's a reason why fire departments are not privately owned-- just as insurance companies will try anything to avoid reimbursing fire insurance claims, a private fire department will avoid providing their services to those who don't (or can't) pay for them. Unfortunately, with state and municipal governments running out of funds and unable to deficit-spend, they may opt to sell these services/assets to the highest bidder with disastrous results; we're already seeing this in juvenile detention, which has seen a remarkable increase in private ownership. Smarter governments would lease a portion of these with the provision that if the private company fails to deliver, the lease is terminated and the government re-takes ownership. At least that would provide some deterrence from abuse.
* Of course, it's entirely possible to have a successful (as in "makes shit-tons of money") business be run by sociopathic pricks-- how else would I explain Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft? Perhaps the difference is that these jerk bosses have found ways to channel their self-centered behavior into improving their businesses?
Here's a simplistic logic flow*; use and modify as desired.
If the student is a complete beginner || lousy coder, or knows programming in a language other than the contest requirements, or he/she knows Visual Basic, start with a mature, stable language that has reasonably consistent syntax. Among the choices available, there's simply no contest-- pick Python**.
Else, if the student is reasonably versed in one of the languages (other than VB), tutor the student in various algorithms and data structures using that language. Observe the code he/she writes and try to identify bad habits and suggest workarounds, etc.
Else (meaning you don't have the time to do the above, which is understandable), give them all a crash course in Python and drill them regularly.
* NOT pseudocode. Don't even try to compile this. I can see the programming professors cringing at the first conditional clause already. ** I'm a Ruby coder myself, so if I had my druthers, I'd pick Ruby. But rules are rules...
I'm sure someone mentioned this (and if there's a comment to this effect, mod Redundant please), but the contest regs rule out Ruby and Lua. Considering it would waste time and concentration in this context, so I'd stick with Python.
Still, it would be nice to see at least 4 more languages, like the aforementioned Ruby, Lua, Lisp (and/or a derivative), and one less mainstream language like Haskell or Ada. That they're including VB and PHP but not any of these is a little disheartening, though not surprising-- programming curricula are not known for creativity.
Any article pre-September 2008 (i.e. Lehman Bros. FAIL) will not take the recession/market crash into account. Naturally, the SpaceX guys probably thought of an IPO until the credit markets froze ca. Q2-Q3 2008.
I don't know what's worse, that our President doesn't (or can't) openly speak out against ACTA and excessive copyright/IP laws, or that there are only 2 posts in this highly-modded discussion that do not automatically protest the President based on a troll article.
Oh, who am I kidding, this is Slashdot. Libertarian and leaping to conclusions that aren't there in reality.
Although I'm sure Microsoft could afford it, giving away WinMo phones, whose OS Microsoft develops and licenses, isn't quite comparable to its employees buying iPhones, which is marketed as a whole Apple product.
But yeah, how the employees spend the cash they earned is hardly the business of upper management. Well, unless they're gaming on their iPhones instead of working.
I don't recall Adam Smith, but there was discussion of Keynes and Keynesian economics in AP US History 14 years ago. I don't know if that was taught in the Honors or college prep levels, though.
And this was in conservative stronghold Orange County, CA. There were students who were conservative activists, who, if they knew enough about Keynes, would surely have objected to him being taught (good thing the teacher was a competitive type and a stickler for the AP test requirements). I'm sure there are a bunch there who love the new Texas standards, unless the percentage of Latinos increased.
Straw man. Show us, please, where critics of the Texas school board are asking people to kill themselves. Blog/forum comments don't count.
Why do you dislike these people so much?
Red herring. This has nothing to do with like or dislike, it has everything to do with good or poor public policy, especially concerning public education.
Full disclosure: I'm a Christian. I believe that I've sinned before a righteous and holy God, and that only the blood sacrifice of his Son can and has saved me. I also believe that Jesus is the penultimate example and instructor, who consistently told his followers to seek justice, especially for those who were politically disadvantaged and/or maligned (lepers, the disabled, the poor, tax collectors, prostitutes), and that those who raised the standards for labor, civil rights, and social support in government were the ones who heeded this message. So the irony that the very people who distrust government, who wish to pay fewer taxes (despite Jesus' command to "render unto Caesar"), who decry the expansion of government, and who panic that their freedom to worship is threatened despite zero evidence, would seek to rewrite history for the entire nation's children, is not lost on me. It seems to me that too many American Christians feel they are entitled to impose through any means, whatever policy they deem fit on the rest of the country, even if the Constitution itself opposes them. I feel that's childish, self-centered, and entirely un-Christ-like, and I am ashamed that so many in this country who call themselves Christian have this sense of entitlement.
Did Jesus ever go and lobby the Jewish Sanhedrin, let alone the Roman government, to lower taxes? Did he complain that his listeners weren't getting a "balanced view"? Did he complain that the historians of his day were "too liberal"?
Why are today's Christians blindly following conservative creeds as zealously as they should follow their Bibles? Where are the Christians decrying the huge wealth gap in this country, and the efforts of the wealthy to keep expanding that gap?
The rest of the rebuttal is trivial:
Do you dislike them because they are promoting Christian values? If you do, do you dislike that they believe that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that who ever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life?
Both are straw men. There are very few people who detest Christians for this very reason, but Jesus said those who hate Christians "hate me also". If you need to ask this question, either you don't know your Bible as well as you should, or you're grandstanding.
Do you dislike them because they try to live like Christ but recognize that when they fail, which they inevitably do, they go back to God and ask for forgiveness?
You've set up another silly argument, and one which Paul already answered: Even if you are forgiven and stumble, you're still responsible for stumbling. Otherwise, why not do whatever you want, since God considers all of your sin-- past present and future-- forgiven?
It's worse than that-- many Christians believe that they can scoff at government critics when their guy is in power (e.g., Reagan and Bush 43), but they are among the first to protest and invoke fire and brimstone sermons about how they're doomed when a Democrat is elected. In other words, it's a convenient use of Romans 13, where Paul tells the church to obey the government in power. In this case they value the Republican alliance between Christian evangelicals and conservatives more than they claim to value the Bible's teachings.
There's tons of other examples, such as the parallels between the Pharisees' treatment of lepers and the treatment of homosexuals and minorities by today's church, as well as foaming at the mouth over abortions when they say or do nothing about the mother's health or the children's poverty, or insisting on no government assistance to the less fortunate when they spend millions on mega-churches rather than their communities. I wouldn't be surprised that there were just as many preachers shouting "Amen!" as those who called for a boycott when Glenn Beck called to Christians to abandon social justice efforts.
It was a mixed bag for Stardock in their negotiations with Atari-- they got Total Annihilation, yes. However, when they asked about Master of Magic, Atari said they wanted all of the marketing rights. The result was, Stardock decided to make the game (tweaked enough to keep the lawyers away) and Atari got nothing there. This is probably a closer scenario to what the OP was asking about-- this publisher apparently isn't interested in reviving an oldie unless someone else does the work and they get the credit.
id also released the Quake engine under the GPL. They probably don't mind the re-implementations, but they probably care when someone redistributes the texture art and sounds that form the rest of the game. Artwork tends to be under much more restrictive licensing terms than programming code, and is probably 75% of the reason why most companies don't open-source their titles even if they are abandonware. But because developers tend to be a bit more permissive, a company will usually say nothing if you build a compatible engine and just use the resources a la Quake or Railroad Tycoon remakes.
Also, said resources may be encrypted or compressed with some odd algorithm-- maybe not for anti-piracy measures like modern-day DRM, but because they wanted to fit the damn application onto tiny floppy disks.
A truly forward-thinking game publisher would release old game executables/code under GPL/BSD and artwork under CC assuming these are possible. Or, maybe a compromise would be to release the code as GPL and have the artwork available as a paid download?
"What consequences?" I'm sure the idiot politician asked. I wonder if this bill bans (1) all salts (which would be impossible), (2) all foods containing sodium chloride (which is ridiculous and cost-prohibitive to enforce), or (3) just all added table/sea salt.
If it's banning (3) and (2), it would ban all foods preserved by brining or curing from being served in restaurants. That means all preserved meats (sausage, ham, and bacon to name a few), preserved fish like gravlax, and all natural pickles such as sauerkraut, not to mention a whole host of ethnic foods that are made by preserving in salt or salt solutions. Let's see this moron backtrack when his favorite pizza joint can't sell pepperoni or olives on their pizzas anymore-- or for that matter, tomato sauce, cheese, and the crust itself. Enjoy your imaginary pizza! The only real topping available is mushrooms!
How about pasta? Every prep method I know involves salted water. Are they going to shut down or fine Italian shops too?
Don't even get me started on the inevitable ruckus the fast-food joints will raise because now their those that salt their fries will find that they taste like cheap greasy gym socks.
One thing I do know is that this bill would force every consumer in his jurisdiction to cook at home, because all the restaurant food would taste like cardboard and/or be so cost-prohibitive that they'd shut down.
And all this assumes that this bill will even pass, because the aforementioned fast-food places will raise enough of a fuss to shut this stupidity down. For once, those poster-children of obesity and crummy labor/management are useful...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, let's see here. The RIAA member companies, when they sign contracts with artists, typically promise some big up-front sum for a number of records to be cut in a specified amount of time-- turns out that this sum is just barely enough to cover expenses and often leaves very little for the artist/band to make a living, forcing them to recoup the difference on live tours (if they have a big enough audience) where the RIAA takes less of a cut. Meanwhile, the record companies take for themselves all reproduction and distribution rights (unless the artist was smart and insisted on keeping those rights), so they have a short leash on their artists while at the same time have the means to harass and financially destroy anyone who dares sample their wares without their express permission.
And that's the recording industry. It often gets worse in motion pictures, where big studios take the American insurance company method of cutting costs-- find every excuse known to man to avoid paying the very people who worked on their blockbuster titles.
These are the people who have the gall to say that they're losing money, and throw up bullshit numbers that essentially say "X downloads of our stuff means X*30 lost sales, therefore all internet downloaders are thieves who owe us X*30000 dollars." Really, you'd think that they'd figure out sooner that treating their own employees/contractors/customers like the filth and grime from Dirty Jobs wouldn't be such a great business strategy?
They picked a fight with a technology that can only grow stronger and faster with time. Honestly, with the new stuff Cisco and Google are putting forward, I can't help but think that this media cartel's comeuppance is here.
Don't even get me started on the authoritarian twits who run MLB and NFL...
1) That might get cost-prohibitive, as games are already multi-million-dollar enterprises. But as a general rule, most companies should stick with the same actor for the same character, or find as close a vocal timbre/cadence equivalent as possible if the original cannot be summoned. Done properly and with the right director, most players might not pick up the differences immediately.
But the problem does get compounded when (shudder) sequels come into play.
2) Usually most studios have similar soundproofing standards, and background noise can be cleaned up; the bottom line here is, don't try to trim the audio budget by cutting out the studio you went to last time.
3) Ellen McLain had a comment in Portal where she said that in most voiceover jobs she did, the direction was stultifyingly boring or restrictive, until she started working with Valve on the character of GlaDOS. I'm sure she would be the first to tell any dev house that if they wanted a text-to-speech translator, they could just hire college students at minimum wage (and I'm sure some houses do just that) or, if the characters are sufficiently robotic, they could use a synthesizer. Hey, if it worked for the Invasion of the Gabber Robots...
4) This is apparently a fundamental lesson in acting or performance art of any form: Accents and mannerisms are ornaments. Do not add ornaments to your performance until you have the fundamentals of the piece down. You will hear every good drama and music teacher tell their students this, and if they do not, they should be fired.
I suppose if you want something marginally more efficient, you could use halogen bulbs, unless you don't like the spectra on those either.
Or if you're hardcore, you could try gas-discharge bulbs-- though to be honest, they don't make 'em for the usual Edison socket (heat/power issues and all).
Not only that, Novell would probably have solid cases for laches (as in, Microsoft waited too long) and possibly breach of contract (if Microsoft promised not to sue for patent infringement). Microsoft may have squelched Mono as soon as de Icaza brought it to light, but they didn't for whatever reason, and if they tried to kill it now with their patent portfolio, they will be laughed out of court.
Well, either they're going to use golf carts, or they're planning on using an interface that can squirt insane amounts of power into the car.
Knowing the Japanese industry, it'll be choice A.
This just in, an east Asian tea consortium responds to activity in Great Britain with a package of prepared C. sinensis leaves and a message reading, "Kindly stop calling this 'your' tea, we've been drinking it for centuries before you started stealing from us."
I guess you're one of those guys who sees the word "desert" and thinks of the Sahara or the lunar surface-- the long and the short of it is, there's no such thing as a lifeless desert. If there's anything decades of environmental awareness (should have) taught us, it's that "plopping" stuff without thinking about how and where can have serious consequences. I'll be among the first to admit that groups like Greenpeace are probably too fanatical to be proposing solutions (rejection of all things nuclear, for example), but there has to come a point where we don't embrace the quick and easy solution without at least giving some thought to all the impacts.
I had a friend tell me once that oil/gas pipelines are beneficial to tundra wildlife because they get a warm place to cozy up to. Seriously. No thought whatsoever about how climate change will affect their habitats, or about how wildlife could starve to death as a result. I suppose it was all good in his head because moose get a free campfire out of the deal before they die.
Technically, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from packaging IE8 (dear God, no) or IE9 as a mandatory update to IE6 and forcing a reboot. Sure, it might require a revision to their policies, and customers might complain, but the Windows Update architecture allows for this.
The only thing preventing them from doing this is all the businesses dependent on IE6-specific intranet and Web applications and unwilling to invest in upgrading to something more standards-compliant. I suppose Microsoft can force the issue and offer an IE6 emulator until they do the upgrade...
You do realize there's this thing called an options dialog, right? For Firefox 3.x, the very first thing the "main" section of the options dialog says:
If you don't want your browser to start where you left off from last time, by all means, pick option 1 or 2.
The "do you want to restore your tabs?" dialog isn't there anymore; in recent releases (3.5+) you get a single window, with a single tab containing an alert message that says, "Well, this is embarrassing...", offering to restore your session or start anew. Nothing stopping you from opening another tab and going to that page you wanted to go to in the first place.
Maybe Opera handles this better by opening your desired page alongside your previous session-- and if you're going to complain about saved sessions, your complaints ought to go to Opera, since they're the ones who pioneered the feature. I haven't tried this with Chrome (I think it destroys the previous session to open that page).
Either you were running a build I've never touched, or you got a tainted Firefox, or you actually clicked on an IE pop-up masquerading as a Firefox dialog. I've used the browser pretty much from 1.0RC and I've never seen what you're describing. In any case, your complaints are based on an outdated version anyway, and are therefore moot.
(Disclaimer: I use Chrome on Windows. Primary reason: the ability to kill Flash when I need to.)
I'll be willing to bet that if Amerin starts having problems, they'll blame CWLP and/or the state/muni governments. That argument will stick if they're actually competing in the same market, even if CWLP and the government was only doing what was the most efficient use of resources.
Usually it's a matter of who is running the organization. I'll bet Amerin is run by sociopathic pricks* who care more about their own yachts than Amerin's well-being, and CWLP is run by competent (if possibly boring) managers.
The best argument against privatizing a public service or asset is usually that the private sector will abuse the fact that the public needs that service or asset. There's a reason why fire departments are not privately owned-- just as insurance companies will try anything to avoid reimbursing fire insurance claims, a private fire department will avoid providing their services to those who don't (or can't) pay for them. Unfortunately, with state and municipal governments running out of funds and unable to deficit-spend, they may opt to sell these services/assets to the highest bidder with disastrous results; we're already seeing this in juvenile detention, which has seen a remarkable increase in private ownership. Smarter governments would lease a portion of these with the provision that if the private company fails to deliver, the lease is terminated and the government re-takes ownership. At least that would provide some deterrence from abuse.
* Of course, it's entirely possible to have a successful (as in "makes shit-tons of money") business be run by sociopathic pricks-- how else would I explain Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft? Perhaps the difference is that these jerk bosses have found ways to channel their self-centered behavior into improving their businesses?
I'd rather watch Mike Rowe disassemble a PC in his "tech recycling" job.
For some reason, I was reminded of Legend of the Red Dragon when they mentioned:
Internet Explorer LOSES 10 CHARM!
Internet Explorer IS NOW KNOWN AS GreenBrowser.
I played that BBS game/MUD in my senior year of high school, though the sysadmin chose to "upgrade" me a few times for some reason.
Here's a simplistic logic flow*; use and modify as desired.
If the student is a complete beginner || lousy coder, or knows programming in a language other than the contest requirements, or he/she knows Visual Basic, start with a mature, stable language that has reasonably consistent syntax. Among the choices available, there's simply no contest-- pick Python**.
Else, if the student is reasonably versed in one of the languages (other than VB), tutor the student in various algorithms and data structures using that language. Observe the code he/she writes and try to identify bad habits and suggest workarounds, etc.
Else (meaning you don't have the time to do the above, which is understandable), give them all a crash course in Python and drill them regularly.
* NOT pseudocode. Don't even try to compile this. I can see the programming professors cringing at the first conditional clause already.
** I'm a Ruby coder myself, so if I had my druthers, I'd pick Ruby. But rules are rules...
I'm sure someone mentioned this (and if there's a comment to this effect, mod Redundant please), but the contest regs rule out Ruby and Lua. Considering it would waste time and concentration in this context, so I'd stick with Python.
Still, it would be nice to see at least 4 more languages, like the aforementioned Ruby, Lua, Lisp (and/or a derivative), and one less mainstream language like Haskell or Ada. That they're including VB and PHP but not any of these is a little disheartening, though not surprising-- programming curricula are not known for creativity.
Any article pre-September 2008 (i.e. Lehman Bros. FAIL) will not take the recession/market crash into account. Naturally, the SpaceX guys probably thought of an IPO until the credit markets froze ca. Q2-Q3 2008.
I don't know what's worse, that our President doesn't (or can't) openly speak out against ACTA and excessive copyright/IP laws, or that there are only 2 posts in this highly-modded discussion that do not automatically protest the President based on a troll article.
Oh, who am I kidding, this is Slashdot. Libertarian and leaping to conclusions that aren't there in reality.
Although I'm sure Microsoft could afford it, giving away WinMo phones, whose OS Microsoft develops and licenses, isn't quite comparable to its employees buying iPhones, which is marketed as a whole Apple product.
But yeah, how the employees spend the cash they earned is hardly the business of upper management. Well, unless they're gaming on their iPhones instead of working.
I don't recall Adam Smith, but there was discussion of Keynes and Keynesian economics in AP US History 14 years ago. I don't know if that was taught in the Honors or college prep levels, though.
And this was in conservative stronghold Orange County, CA. There were students who were conservative activists, who, if they knew enough about Keynes, would surely have objected to him being taught (good thing the teacher was a competitive type and a stickler for the AP test requirements). I'm sure there are a bunch there who love the new Texas standards, unless the percentage of Latinos increased.
Straw man. Show us, please, where critics of the Texas school board are asking people to kill themselves. Blog/forum comments don't count.
Red herring. This has nothing to do with like or dislike, it has everything to do with good or poor public policy, especially concerning public education.
Full disclosure: I'm a Christian. I believe that I've sinned before a righteous and holy God, and that only the blood sacrifice of his Son can and has saved me. I also believe that Jesus is the penultimate example and instructor, who consistently told his followers to seek justice, especially for those who were politically disadvantaged and/or maligned (lepers, the disabled, the poor, tax collectors, prostitutes), and that those who raised the standards for labor, civil rights, and social support in government were the ones who heeded this message. So the irony that the very people who distrust government, who wish to pay fewer taxes (despite Jesus' command to "render unto Caesar"), who decry the expansion of government, and who panic that their freedom to worship is threatened despite zero evidence, would seek to rewrite history for the entire nation's children, is not lost on me. It seems to me that too many American Christians feel they are entitled to impose through any means, whatever policy they deem fit on the rest of the country, even if the Constitution itself opposes them. I feel that's childish, self-centered, and entirely un-Christ-like, and I am ashamed that so many in this country who call themselves Christian have this sense of entitlement.
Did Jesus ever go and lobby the Jewish Sanhedrin, let alone the Roman government, to lower taxes? Did he complain that his listeners weren't getting a "balanced view"? Did he complain that the historians of his day were "too liberal"?
Why are today's Christians blindly following conservative creeds as zealously as they should follow their Bibles? Where are the Christians decrying the huge wealth gap in this country, and the efforts of the wealthy to keep expanding that gap?
The rest of the rebuttal is trivial:
Both are straw men. There are very few people who detest Christians for this very reason, but Jesus said those who hate Christians "hate me also". If you need to ask this question, either you don't know your Bible as well as you should, or you're grandstanding.
You've set up another silly argument, and one which Paul already answered: Even if you are forgiven and stumble, you're still responsible for stumbling. Otherwise, why not do whatever you want, since God considers all of your sin-- past present and future-- forgiven?
Unless there's a publisher's rebellion, Texas textbook standards become the United States standards due to sheer size.
I wish I were joking.
It's worse than that-- many Christians believe that they can scoff at government critics when their guy is in power (e.g., Reagan and Bush 43), but they are among the first to protest and invoke fire and brimstone sermons about how they're doomed when a Democrat is elected. In other words, it's a convenient use of Romans 13, where Paul tells the church to obey the government in power. In this case they value the Republican alliance between Christian evangelicals and conservatives more than they claim to value the Bible's teachings.
There's tons of other examples, such as the parallels between the Pharisees' treatment of lepers and the treatment of homosexuals and minorities by today's church, as well as foaming at the mouth over abortions when they say or do nothing about the mother's health or the children's poverty, or insisting on no government assistance to the less fortunate when they spend millions on mega-churches rather than their communities. I wouldn't be surprised that there were just as many preachers shouting "Amen!" as those who called for a boycott when Glenn Beck called to Christians to abandon social justice efforts.
It was a mixed bag for Stardock in their negotiations with Atari-- they got Total Annihilation, yes. However, when they asked about Master of Magic, Atari said they wanted all of the marketing rights. The result was, Stardock decided to make the game (tweaked enough to keep the lawyers away) and Atari got nothing there. This is probably a closer scenario to what the OP was asking about-- this publisher apparently isn't interested in reviving an oldie unless someone else does the work and they get the credit.
Elemental: War of Magic
id also released the Quake engine under the GPL. They probably don't mind the re-implementations, but they probably care when someone redistributes the texture art and sounds that form the rest of the game. Artwork tends to be under much more restrictive licensing terms than programming code, and is probably 75% of the reason why most companies don't open-source their titles even if they are abandonware. But because developers tend to be a bit more permissive, a company will usually say nothing if you build a compatible engine and just use the resources a la Quake or Railroad Tycoon remakes.
Also, said resources may be encrypted or compressed with some odd algorithm-- maybe not for anti-piracy measures like modern-day DRM, but because they wanted to fit the damn application onto tiny floppy disks.
A truly forward-thinking game publisher would release old game executables/code under GPL/BSD and artwork under CC assuming these are possible. Or, maybe a compromise would be to release the code as GPL and have the artwork available as a paid download?
You couldn't tell by the Playstation controller icon? Let me guess, you're using lynx?
"What consequences?" I'm sure the idiot politician asked. I wonder if this bill bans (1) all salts (which would be impossible), (2) all foods containing sodium chloride (which is ridiculous and cost-prohibitive to enforce), or (3) just all added table/sea salt.
If it's banning (3) and (2), it would ban all foods preserved by brining or curing from being served in restaurants. That means all preserved meats (sausage, ham, and bacon to name a few), preserved fish like gravlax, and all natural pickles such as sauerkraut, not to mention a whole host of ethnic foods that are made by preserving in salt or salt solutions. Let's see this moron backtrack when his favorite pizza joint can't sell pepperoni or olives on their pizzas anymore-- or for that matter, tomato sauce, cheese, and the crust itself. Enjoy your imaginary pizza! The only real topping available is mushrooms!
How about pasta? Every prep method I know involves salted water. Are they going to shut down or fine Italian shops too?
Don't even get me started on the inevitable ruckus the fast-food joints will raise because now their those that salt their fries will find that they taste like cheap greasy gym socks.
One thing I do know is that this bill would force every consumer in his jurisdiction to cook at home, because all the restaurant food would taste like cardboard and/or be so cost-prohibitive that they'd shut down.
And all this assumes that this bill will even pass, because the aforementioned fast-food places will raise enough of a fuss to shut this stupidity down. For once, those poster-children of obesity and crummy labor/management are useful...