Just because it's stiffer doesn't mean that it's harder. (god there are so many things wrong with that statement on so many levels)
Note however that we don't need a stonger abrasive material. Grinding works on the basis of extreme velocity on the part of the particles in the abrasive wheel or band to do the cutting work. Aluminum oxide would work for the purposes of grinding this material into print. Given that it's a ceramic within a tin matrix; ALO2 would do beautifully.
As for heavy cutting work, Tungsten Carbide would do just as well. I don't see anything to indicate that the material is HARDER than carbide.
And speak of the applications..........to tell you the truth there really aren't that many widespread uses for a material like this. For now, with the expense of this material that's going to stay as it is for quite a while, there are FEW cases that would warrant using this material.
It's unfortunate that most gun nuts are all backwater hick libertarians willing to vote against their own interests, and sit on their firearms against their own interests, instead of more rational people capable of fomenting revolution and bringing about a post-state, post-capitalist society.
Even more unfortunate that most anti-gun liberals don't realize that most of their second ammendment toting brethren are sitting right beside them at work and laughing at all the same jokes they are. Or that said anti-gun liberals are too naive to pull their head out of the sand and push their ideals onto as many people as they can, hollering for their fellows and neighbors to be disarmed and made helpless against the lawless criminals that will not be disarmed. Or that they sully the names of law-abiding citizens merely because they own bullets and guns that fire them.
Believe it or not, you probably know someone whom you respect in the utmost, who carries a gun everyday, everywhere. Unless you absolutely refuse to deal with anyone who isn't pro-life, against capitol punishment, pro-laissez faire and vegitarian, I would gaurantee this. You'd never know it, because he/she doesn't want you to. Stereotypes and slander like the bile you just expressed are the reason why.
"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one"
And the problem with Occam's Razor is that it is seriously misinterpreted. "All things being equal" being key. His original words were "Thou shalt not pluralize needlessly." This is of course the extremely bastardized english translation. When "All things being equal" comes into play, it means that all information is in hand. Which in almost every circumstance Occam's Razor is used in, is not the case.
Take for instance, our lack of data previous the 19th century. BIG problem. We don't know whether we've seen similar temperature differentiations in the past because the technology did not exist to measure regional temperature averages, let alone global ones. When we sit here and argue about mankind's affectual nature, temperature is often at the basis of the argument. Being as how we didn't even have remotely reliable thermometers until the early 1900's; man's way of thinking that we are at fault for the minimal raise in temperature in remote areas not nearly to be construed by any analytical mind to be on global scale is very vain. The average temperature of the earth hasn't seen an increase in years, yet because of the increase in isolated areas due to easily defined variables not related to emittance of vehicles we have a global crisis on our hands.
Let's take my case for example. I'm sitting in -2F weather..........a temperature we haven't seen since the early 90's. This is in Colorado, we've been getting hit by precipitous weather non-stop for almost a month now in a manner unheard of for more than a decade. This change in weather I believe is not an artifact of our "pollutants" but a matter of natural phenomenae. Anybody remember the "global cooling" crisis? I'm not even old enough to have been alive during the period, but let's suffice it to say that the "Cold War" was aptly named. I remember Al Nino, I remember certain hurricanes resulting in myself and family members getting sucked out 10 feet into the surf after hurricanes near the east coast, I even remember the Berlin wall. I can say with empirical certainty that such weather is a normal occurance over the course of time; but people insist on being paranoid.
Which brings us back to my point.
"All things being equal"
When this is said, it means all information available being measured against the applicable results. We have results, but scant amounts of data. Terrestrial weather patterns have been patently cyclical since man has existed (which is more than 14,000 years, thank you very FUCKING MUCH); and have been observed since modern measuring equipment and variants thereof have been in production; yet we fail to take that into account and cannot take that into account until we have at least 2 weather cycle's worth of data to compare to. We're phasing into cycle two.
Before using a man's words, at least do him the favor of using them as they were meant to be used. To do otherwise is to piss, shit and throw any manner of excrement on his name. I do hope to god any wise words I have to share with the world would not be used for such half-assed, imbecilic retardation as Occam's Razor has been used for in the past years. Occam by all technical accounts is a many centuries old shit-fucker. I'm talking about getting a hard on for the stinkiest, unhealthiest corn-filled feces on the planet.
First off, the secondary market theory is complete bullshit. Supply and demand, remember? Raising the price wouldn't have changed the supply in this instance, but would have detrimented the demand. Trouble satiating a demand too big for you to handle is a happy problem, trust me. But in the meanwhile, the demand is still going to be there as long as you ramp up your supply at a decent pace to catch up. That they didn't charge more to hurt the demand for that small period of time where they would have been able to get away with it is going to profit them more in the long run. Hell, they're the only ones making profit off their systems anyway, something Nintendo has been good at for a long time has been keeping EVERYTHING profitable.
This is getting into the macroeconomics material you've obviously never read, so I'll leave it at that.
Denver didn't even get on the list..........
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Top U.S. Tech Cities
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· Score: 1
I'm not saying it should've been at the top, but if Seattle got in, Denver should've got in on merit of the DTC alone. Let alone School of Mines, CU Boulder (record number of nobel winners and laureates), DU, all that fun jazz.
I need a gun to hunt. I need a gun to protect myself. I need a gun to protect my family and home. I need a gun so as to provide a deterrance from the criminals who wish to violate my rights in the first place.
I have an unalienable right to have a weapon, an effective weapon that I can use to defend against any threat I may have to face in my daily activities. As do you. You have a right to free speech, you have a right to a safe home and the ability to carry on in your normal every day life without risk of life and limb. That right, however, stops where mine begin. My right to carry a weapon is more important than any size population's will to deny me of that right, even if that population is of the country I live in. Better the few selfish with their rights than the masses foolish with theirs.
I'm not supposed to be ok with having my basic human rights raped as they would be in the UK. I have a right to screw my girlfriend in the alley if we get a wild hair and an urge without being on national television. I have a right to every day actions without having all of them recorded and catalogued. The day you have to answer for deviating from your normal route home from work is the day you have too few rights to be a human being. If that sounded like a superiority complex to you Brits, it was. Cameras in the subway is one thing, cameras on every street corner? Freedom comes at a cost people, and that cost is safety. Living in freedom is never safe, because others have the capability of enacting their will.
That freedom is more important than the lives of those that want more safety at the cost of MY freedom. Fight for your safety, or you don't deserve it.
Secondly, where do the criminals get their guns? According to the FBI, over 99% of the guns that were made since 1995 that are found in the hands of criminals were purchased by someone that could legally buy them. Otherwise NICS would have prevented their purchase in the first place. So how do the criminals get guns? They get them from the NRA morons that buy them. The NRA morons either give or sell the guns to the criminals. That is why the NRA morons should be rounded up and put in prison. They're the ones enabling the criminals. If we stopped allowing those morons to buy new guns, that would cut-off the supply of guns to criminals. Why are some people too stupid to understand that?
There is no proof of that......whatsoever. You can't provide a single shred of evidence to support that theory, any day of the week.
I'm a gunsmith, a card carrying NRA member and about to start training in the police academy. As someone who knows a little bit about the armed citizens of this country and has been exposed to the culture that carries guns criminally; I can safely say that the NRA members aren't the problem. Most guns carried by criminals are stolen. Stolen in the middle of a criminal act, I might add. Add to that the black market of arms imported to the U.S. from Brazil through and from Mexico and Russia through Alaska and Canada, and you have yourself a supply of illegal arms supplied at the fault of everyone BUT legally armed citizens.
Furthermore, if you're willing to tell your police force that they don't need guns and expect them to show up for work the next day, please start your own fucking country. Unlike you hole-hiding liberals, most of us understand that there are people out there who want to carry guns for their own criminal ends and no amount of restriction will prevent them from doing so. Disarming the population only leaves a mass of easier targets for the people who don't want to follow the law, no matter what your delusions are about the wolves' ability to arm themselves. A population capable of defending itself is always a deterrance to criminals, in every situation.
The day noone ever needs a gun isn't coming any time soon. Until then, my right to defend myself from criminals and potentially my government is more important that your feelings of safety or notions of wanting to live in your "ideal" society. You want me disarmed, disarm the criminals, government, and all the world's militaries; then we can talk about disarming ME.
Don't worry, your faith will be restored when you hit the Demon Walls.
One of the beauties of the gambit system is that it doesn't take too particularly well towards time constraints. When you hit the Demon Wall (don't bitch at me for spoilers, you know you were excited to hear that there is one;)), you will know exactly what I'm talking about and appreciate how much the gambits might be able to compliment your strategy in some ways, and detriment it in others. (Bitch at me for spoilers now:) There are 2 Demon Walls. The first one you had MUCH less time to beat, and most people often ran away from it, as you did have the option. I beat it, without doing any extra leveling up before hand, and I had to work WITH the gambit system to do so. That you can interrupt the gambit system by issuing your own command is excellent. You can even turn them off, or edit gambits on the fly. I can switch my party to heavy hitters, keep one caster in the brood, know that the swordsmen will keep swinging while I go about making them more capable of dealing damage. I can turn the heal gambits off so that the party focuses on dealing damage, and turn the status gambits on to get rid of Blind automatically. Then I can focus on keeping everybody glowing red (HINT!) and healed manually, so that maximum effort is put towards damage dealing in the 90 seconds I have to beat this particular boss. 90 seconds will seem impossible the first time. You might barely get him to half health the second. Then you'll start to thinking............I'll admit sometimes the effort will drive you berserk (WINK!), but when you finally beat the fucker after dying 5 times trying to figure out a way to kill him; you'll have faith in the gambit system.
And in case it isn't obvious yet, keep one of your heavy hitters updated on arcane magic.........oh fuck it, Berserk is your friend!!
Believe it or not, the writers did a good job of tying up the loose ends that things like that tend to leave.
Balthier let Vaan tag along because he didn't know the city of Rabanastre. He knew Vaan was a street kid, and saw that he was capable of getting through a slew of Imperial Gaurds and architected safeties and traps to get into a vault. When you're in unfamiliar territory, you want a guide.
Basch's weakness is explained exactly as it is. The poor bastard was starved and in shackles for a prolonged period of time. You could tell just by the looks of him that he was emaciated and wasting. Of course he's going to be weak, or, in this instance, at about the same capability as a 17 year old street kid.
There are flaws mind you, but there are explanations, even within the plot. This makes things a little more palateable.
FF6 didn't really have that affect in this particular context. You didn't bank your points. You had espers equipped and earning sp helped you learn the spells that particular esper gave you.
When you learned all the spells, however, SP was wasted. In X and XII, you bank your points.
I stopped playing the franchise very soon after X came out. I heard 11 going MMO, and decided I was quits from Final Fantasy for awhile. I was almost disgusted when I heard about X-2. I envisioned Square as another of of EA's drooling lap dogs and almost swore off not only the Final Fantasy series but the company in general.
That is until I heard about what they did with XII.
Picked it up, I thought maybe it could possibly have some redeeming qualities that could perhaps restore my faith in Square. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out the entire game was a redeeming quality. It hit on every level a Final Fantasy is supposed to hit on and even accomplished some things that none other had. The most important is the story. Final Fantasies are operas, let's not kid ourselves. FFIV, VI, VII and VIII are very popular examples of this, empires are rising and falling, romances flourish and are tragically ended. Armies clash, the alliance and enslavement of great and powerful beings to aid or detriment the protagonist are occurring, you are affecting change on a world-wide level. The way in which XII tells its story is classic, classy, and every bit as intrigueing as a Grecian Epic.
Even the music lets on to the scope you are supposed to be on, deep and heart-wrenching. Bass kicks in when you're in danger, treble when you're coming out of a situation the victor. The music is supposed to make you feel as if the whole world depends on your actions, as the world DOES depend on you. They made a wise move by letting the music fade to the background a little and let the sound effects, the ambient sounds of the world around you help do the job. It's alot like the Rise of the Valkyries is heard softly in the distance as you hear the gnashing and clangs of combat, the entire Division of Imperial swordsmen draws near as klaxons sound.
Another level that this particular installation hit home on was showing you just the level of scope you're dealing with. In previous installations, you didn't particularly get a feel for just how menacing your foes are. Behemoths seemed to be caricatures, your party merely felling another foe as you continued on your path. The genious of the battle system they are implementing (Which is from KOTOR, BTW) is that now you know JUST how menacing a behemoth is. He's huge, he makes your party look like stick figures. Demon Walls are now exactly as their name implies, and actually seem capable of crushing the party to death if you don't defeat it in time. Espers are giant, their weapons mighty and powerful, seemingly appropriate for the amount of damage they do. The legendary weapons you procure that somehow have to justify the vast differential in damage output now do so graphically. Of course the Zodiac Spear is going to hit hard, look at the damn thing! You're seeing both the weapon and how it is used now, in previous installations you merely saw your party line up side by side, with your opponent in the distance. Now you see actual combat, not some spikey haired blonde with an emo outfit disappearing in midair and materializing 5 feet over an enemy with his sword pointed downwards. A man with an affinity for the deadly arts charges, raises his weapon and brings it down with devastating affect.
In all, FFXII got back to FF's roots. Telling an epic story, and getting you involved. Something I hope will be SOP for Square-Enix for the foreseeable future.
Just an aside, as someone with a little history in metallurgy:
Pattern-Welded is actually a weaker sum of the metals that went into it's production. Molecular cohesion just does not happen, the metals aren't being smelted or wrought together in a way that is conducive to improving the strength of iron. No matter if it's 2 steels being sandwiched (which is basically the process used when going for aesthetics alone) or even if it's a tool steel being etched by laser or in an acid bath; which is also done.
Damascene steel on the other hand, is extremely strong. It can hold an edge while still maintaining flexibility. The silica content as well as the amount of tungsten present in the sand from which the iron was extracted is a synergistic combination. Silica providing flexibility (I'm hacking a metallurgical textbook in half to get where I'm going, forgive me), with the tungsten giving the steel a little UMMF that none other had at the time--bands of tungsten carbide. In itself completely inflexible but present as it is in most blades it actually is given alot of room to move.....by the silica.
Similar qualities are present in the tungsten rich sands of some Japanese waters. However not in the same manner, the Japanese had an ingenious forging method, sometimes referred to as the 1000-leaf method by those speaking of it in English.
REAL Damascus steel is still legendary not only among sword and knive enthusiasts, but amont metallurgists as well. It is for all intensive purposes a wonder-metal, even by today's standards. In today's day of Titanium, Monel, Inconel and Carpenter-20, Damascus is still something people in the field whistle about.
Wrong. Paradigm shift was coined by Thomas Kuhn to note a wide shift in belief among the scientific community.
Among the paradigm shifts in history are the shifts from Ptolemaic Astronomy to Copernican Astronomy. Einstein's theory of General Relativity was a paradigm shift from Maxwell's theory. Newtonian physics represented not necessarily a shift but rather a unification of general physical science; still considered by many to be a paradigm shift.
A commonheld belief among a vast portion of the scientific community is considered a "Paradigm". Take here for instance, the theory of Global Warming. A great chunk of researchers believe in it while the rest more or less hold to the theory of Cyclic Climate. While there is alot of argument about what today's climate changes are representative of, we have yet to see a Kuhnian Paradigm Shift. As such it will likely never happen, 20 years from now the temperatures will stop rising and start dropping (strangely enough as both theories predict), and people will come to light in realization of the historical precedent that points towards Cyclic Climate.
I'm fairly certain a wiki search will do a much better job than I at describing exactly what Kuhn meant by a Paradigm Shift, for I'm too lazy to get into the more elaborate explanation; but you'll probably find more or less the same answer. I'm only lucky enough to be covering this in one of my humanities courses:-P
Occam's razor though would point me towards "It's just colder. Global warming is just so much hot air!";-)
Occam's Razor wouldn't point you anywhere.
And I quote: "Thou Shalt Not Pluralize Needlessly."
It would tell you to find out if "Global Warming" is complicating itself too much, and rule it out if it was. Occam never intended people to simply discount things if it was a complicated explanation; people just bastardized and butchered his words.
Art asked something similar about "if it works, why aren't we getting any information from the future right now?" The excuse was that you can only send info back so far as the machine has been turned on.
Dude, that's not any reason to discount this man. For the simple fact of the matter that this is how time travel would work, if it did. Hawking theorized this particular aspect of time travel a couple of decades ago.
I'm going to sum up the reasoning behind it in a way you just might, barely, be able to maybe concievably understand. Chaos theory, for one, is something we can all accept to be more or less true. Given enough time, anything that can happen, will happen. For the purpose of saving ourselves a headache, we must also assume our future time of existence must also be infinite, unless proven otherwise. If it were possible to travel further back in time than a time machine existed, and anything that can happen will happen, life as we know it probably wouldn't exist. Some jackass would've travelled back in time to destroy the earth, enlighten us, etc. etc.. The mere fact that we haven't yet seen one uber-powerful soldier jump out of a wormhole and start riddling people with tiny little holes with plasma or laser rifles, affirms this notion that time travel is only possible as far back in time as there was a machine to do so. The only way it doesn't prove Hawking right is if we all unanimously agree to start thermonuclear war in the very near future and off ourselves promptly if we survive the initial bombings. Either that or an asteroid we haven't seen hits within the next 5 years or so, and all mankind dies. Long story short, either Hawking is right or we all die in very short order; I think I'll go with the notion of a paraplegic genius knowing what he's talking about.
Now, to accept time travel is possible, one must also be able to concede that time is something tangible. It has to be substantial, something you can capture and control, so to speak. The notion of a time machine is to "capture" time, and control it. Many physicists that cede time travel to be possible also make the point to show that if it is, time is alot like a fabric. A time machine would be a "hole" punched into a gathered up fold in this fabric. The more time passes while this machine is "capturing" time is merely more folds of the fabric being brought together while a hole is punched in it. This is another point to be made that we can only jump through this particular hole, where it is in the fabric, which would also be in relation to it's location. We wouldn't be able to jump from 2006 in the Mojave to 3006 in Taiwan, for example, well we might be able to but we do not know yet just how vast the reach of a particular time machine would be. The machine would both have to "capture" time and be able to send data through the "holes" to another location that might be outside of the folded fabric, so to speak.
Another interesting fact is that we do not yet know if there exists a natural occuring phenomena that might also capture time and allow for it to be controlled. We'd actually be a little arrogant to say time travel is only possible as far back as a time machine existed, or before we created something capable of capturing time; because there might yet already exist naturally occurring rifts in time. They would, however, be somewhere far from here in all likelihood, so for all practical purposes; we might as well assume that matter or information can only be transmitted as far back (or forward, for that matter) as the time machine was/is/will be switched on;)
Unfortunately, people who do not understand a subject adequately cannot differentiate between the crackpot's impressive yet incomprehensible rantings vs. your reasoned informed explanations of why the crackpot is wrong... hence the reason he was on Art Bell, and why we're discussing him on/. per an exciting-sounding but ill-expressed story.
If you're going to spout off about understanding a subject and talk down to someone using that as a high-horse, then know what the fuck you're talking about.
Mark fence jumpers with permanent ink, throw some gluey substance in with it that will dry and be practically impossible to remove, and you have a bonified way to tell which of the people making your food jumped the border or came here on visa.
There is a finite amount of evil in the world, but an infinite amount of stupidity.
Stupidity doesn't get along well with happy coincidence.
That the voting problems just happen to be with democrats voting along the party lines, again; in a state notorious for voting fraud isn't a product of stupidity. That this problem smiles on a political party who just so happens to have the sympathies of the manufacturer of this particular problematic machine, not a product of stupidity. That this problem might occur in other states and districts, definitely not going to be a product of stupidity. Nothing about this situation alludes to laziness, stupidity, or incompetence.
I'm not saying this is evil, but I see only evidence that points to this being a product of planning and imposed circumstances.
By the way, Ghandi's original quote was "Do not attribute to evil what laziness could easily explain."
And Einstein's original quo........nevermind, it's lost on you anyway.
I mean to include some scientists and philosophers in this group-- pretty much anyone who talks about "the mind" as a separable entity from "the body".
That would comprise about all of the scientific community. Among scientists, the argument about the existence of the mind and it's correlation to the body could easily be split into 3 schools of thought. The Materialists (Hobbes), the Idealists (Berkeley) and the Dualists (Descartes). Across the realms of science and philosophy, the mind is always seperate from body in as much as they can't be divided into eachother. About the closest we get to the consideration of mind being OF the body is Hobbes' Materialism.
Even Descartes was forced to consider the mind and one's body two different substances, in his theory of psycho-physical dualism. Idealists do not consider bodies to exists, but that all we see, all our interactions are of the mind.
Science has not done much to define the existence of mind and body and their differences and interactions. Idealists died out in the 18th and 19th century, but as far as what we believe about the mind, most subscribe either to the Cartesian or Materialist school of thought.
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Just because it's stiffer doesn't mean that it's harder. (god there are so many things wrong with that statement on so many levels)
Note however that we don't need a stonger abrasive material. Grinding works on the basis of extreme velocity on the part of the particles in the abrasive wheel or band to do the cutting work. Aluminum oxide would work for the purposes of grinding this material into print. Given that it's a ceramic within a tin matrix; ALO2 would do beautifully.
As for heavy cutting work, Tungsten Carbide would do just as well. I don't see anything to indicate that the material is HARDER than carbide.
And speak of the applications..........to tell you the truth there really aren't that many widespread uses for a material like this. For now, with the expense of this material that's going to stay as it is for quite a while, there are FEW cases that would warrant using this material.
It's unfortunate that most gun nuts are all backwater hick libertarians willing to vote against their own interests, and sit on their firearms against their own interests, instead of more rational people capable of fomenting revolution and bringing about a post-state, post-capitalist society.
Even more unfortunate that most anti-gun liberals don't realize that most of their second ammendment toting brethren are sitting right beside them at work and laughing at all the same jokes they are. Or that said anti-gun liberals are too naive to pull their head out of the sand and push their ideals onto as many people as they can, hollering for their fellows and neighbors to be disarmed and made helpless against the lawless criminals that will not be disarmed. Or that they sully the names of law-abiding citizens merely because they own bullets and guns that fire them.
Believe it or not, you probably know someone whom you respect in the utmost, who carries a gun everyday, everywhere. Unless you absolutely refuse to deal with anyone who isn't pro-life, against capitol punishment, pro-laissez faire and vegitarian, I would gaurantee this. You'd never know it, because he/she doesn't want you to. Stereotypes and slander like the bile you just expressed are the reason why.
Shit, Shower and SHAVE you nitwit!
"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one"
And the problem with Occam's Razor is that it is seriously misinterpreted. "All things being equal" being key. His original words were "Thou shalt not pluralize needlessly." This is of course the extremely bastardized english translation. When "All things being equal" comes into play, it means that all information is in hand. Which in almost every circumstance Occam's Razor is used in, is not the case.
Take for instance, our lack of data previous the 19th century. BIG problem. We don't know whether we've seen similar temperature differentiations in the past because the technology did not exist to measure regional temperature averages, let alone global ones. When we sit here and argue about mankind's affectual nature, temperature is often at the basis of the argument. Being as how we didn't even have remotely reliable thermometers until the early 1900's; man's way of thinking that we are at fault for the minimal raise in temperature in remote areas not nearly to be construed by any analytical mind to be on global scale is very vain. The average temperature of the earth hasn't seen an increase in years, yet because of the increase in isolated areas due to easily defined variables not related to emittance of vehicles we have a global crisis on our hands.
Let's take my case for example. I'm sitting in -2F weather..........a temperature we haven't seen since the early 90's. This is in Colorado, we've been getting hit by precipitous weather non-stop for almost a month now in a manner unheard of for more than a decade. This change in weather I believe is not an artifact of our "pollutants" but a matter of natural phenomenae. Anybody remember the "global cooling" crisis? I'm not even old enough to have been alive during the period, but let's suffice it to say that the "Cold War" was aptly named. I remember Al Nino, I remember certain hurricanes resulting in myself and family members getting sucked out 10 feet into the surf after hurricanes near the east coast, I even remember the Berlin wall. I can say with empirical certainty that such weather is a normal occurance over the course of time; but people insist on being paranoid.
Which brings us back to my point.
"All things being equal"
When this is said, it means all information available being measured against the applicable results. We have results, but scant amounts of data. Terrestrial weather patterns have been patently cyclical since man has existed (which is more than 14,000 years, thank you very FUCKING MUCH); and have been observed since modern measuring equipment and variants thereof have been in production; yet we fail to take that into account and cannot take that into account until we have at least 2 weather cycle's worth of data to compare to. We're phasing into cycle two.
Before using a man's words, at least do him the favor of using them as they were meant to be used. To do otherwise is to piss, shit and throw any manner of excrement on his name. I do hope to god any wise words I have to share with the world would not be used for such half-assed, imbecilic retardation as Occam's Razor has been used for in the past years. Occam by all technical accounts is a many centuries old shit-fucker. I'm talking about getting a hard on for the stinkiest, unhealthiest corn-filled feces on the planet.
Have you ever taken an economics course?
I'm intelligent enough that I don't need to.
First off, the secondary market theory is complete bullshit. Supply and demand, remember? Raising the price wouldn't have changed the supply in this instance, but would have detrimented the demand. Trouble satiating a demand too big for you to handle is a happy problem, trust me. But in the meanwhile, the demand is still going to be there as long as you ramp up your supply at a decent pace to catch up. That they didn't charge more to hurt the demand for that small period of time where they would have been able to get away with it is going to profit them more in the long run. Hell, they're the only ones making profit off their systems anyway, something Nintendo has been good at for a long time has been keeping EVERYTHING profitable.
This is getting into the macroeconomics material you've obviously never read, so I'll leave it at that.
I'm not saying it should've been at the top, but if Seattle got in, Denver should've got in on merit of the DTC alone. Let alone School of Mines, CU Boulder (record number of nobel winners and laureates), DU, all that fun jazz.
I need a gun to hunt. I need a gun to protect myself. I need a gun to protect my family and home. I need a gun so as to provide a deterrance from the criminals who wish to violate my rights in the first place.
I have an unalienable right to have a weapon, an effective weapon that I can use to defend against any threat I may have to face in my daily activities. As do you. You have a right to free speech, you have a right to a safe home and the ability to carry on in your normal every day life without risk of life and limb. That right, however, stops where mine begin. My right to carry a weapon is more important than any size population's will to deny me of that right, even if that population is of the country I live in. Better the few selfish with their rights than the masses foolish with theirs.
I'm not supposed to be ok with having my basic human rights raped as they would be in the UK. I have a right to screw my girlfriend in the alley if we get a wild hair and an urge without being on national television. I have a right to every day actions without having all of them recorded and catalogued. The day you have to answer for deviating from your normal route home from work is the day you have too few rights to be a human being. If that sounded like a superiority complex to you Brits, it was.
Cameras in the subway is one thing, cameras on every street corner? Freedom comes at a cost people, and that cost is safety. Living in freedom is never safe, because others have the capability of enacting their will.
That freedom is more important than the lives of those that want more safety at the cost of MY freedom. Fight for your safety, or you don't deserve it.
Is to alienate them in the same way we're getting alienated.
;)
Surveil our senators, department secretaries, everyone. At all times.
After a quarter of them gets caught with hookers, the whole surveillance thing will go tits up RIGHT quick
Secondly, where do the criminals get their guns? According to the FBI, over 99% of the guns that were made since 1995 that are found in the hands of criminals were purchased by someone that could legally buy them. Otherwise NICS would have prevented their purchase in the first place. So how do the criminals get guns? They get them from the NRA morons that buy them. The NRA morons either give or sell the guns to the criminals. That is why the NRA morons should be rounded up and put in prison. They're the ones enabling the criminals. If we stopped allowing those morons to buy new guns, that would cut-off the supply of guns to criminals. Why are some people too stupid to understand that?
There is no proof of that......whatsoever. You can't provide a single shred of evidence to support that theory, any day of the week.
I'm a gunsmith, a card carrying NRA member and about to start training in the police academy. As someone who knows a little bit about the armed citizens of this country and has been exposed to the culture that carries guns criminally; I can safely say that the NRA members aren't the problem. Most guns carried by criminals are stolen. Stolen in the middle of a criminal act, I might add. Add to that the black market of arms imported to the U.S. from Brazil through and from Mexico and Russia through Alaska and Canada, and you have yourself a supply of illegal arms supplied at the fault of everyone BUT legally armed citizens.
Furthermore, if you're willing to tell your police force that they don't need guns and expect them to show up for work the next day, please start your own fucking country. Unlike you hole-hiding liberals, most of us understand that there are people out there who want to carry guns for their own criminal ends and no amount of restriction will prevent them from doing so. Disarming the population only leaves a mass of easier targets for the people who don't want to follow the law, no matter what your delusions are about the wolves' ability to arm themselves. A population capable of defending itself is always a deterrance to criminals, in every situation.
The day noone ever needs a gun isn't coming any time soon. Until then, my right to defend myself from criminals and potentially my government is more important that your feelings of safety or notions of wanting to live in your "ideal" society. You want me disarmed, disarm the criminals, government, and all the world's militaries; then we can talk about disarming ME.
Actually x^(-2) == 1/(x^2).
;) Well, in decent highschools........
I believe you meant to say x^(-1/2)
Too bad the people modding you up don't have math degrees. =P
Degrees? Highschool algebra would teach you that much
That state of affairs is propagated more by women than it is men, by the way ;)
Don't worry, your faith will be restored when you hit the Demon Walls.
;)), you will know exactly what I'm talking about and appreciate how much the gambits might be able to compliment your strategy in some ways, and detriment it in others. (Bitch at me for spoilers now:) There are 2 Demon Walls. The first one you had MUCH less time to beat, and most people often ran away from it, as you did have the option. I beat it, without doing any extra leveling up before hand, and I had to work WITH the gambit system to do so. That you can interrupt the gambit system by issuing your own command is excellent. You can even turn them off, or edit gambits on the fly. I can switch my party to heavy hitters, keep one caster in the brood, know that the swordsmen will keep swinging while I go about making them more capable of dealing damage. I can turn the heal gambits off so that the party focuses on dealing damage, and turn the status gambits on to get rid of Blind automatically. Then I can focus on keeping everybody glowing red (HINT!) and healed manually, so that maximum effort is put towards damage dealing in the 90 seconds I have to beat this particular boss. 90 seconds will seem impossible the first time. You might barely get him to half health the second. Then you'll start to thinking............I'll admit sometimes the effort will drive you berserk (WINK!), but when you finally beat the fucker after dying 5 times trying to figure out a way to kill him; you'll have faith in the gambit system.
One of the beauties of the gambit system is that it doesn't take too particularly well towards time constraints. When you hit the Demon Wall (don't bitch at me for spoilers, you know you were excited to hear that there is one
And in case it isn't obvious yet, keep one of your heavy hitters updated on arcane magic.........oh fuck it, Berserk is your friend!!
Believe it or not, the writers did a good job of tying up the loose ends that things like that tend to leave.
Balthier let Vaan tag along because he didn't know the city of Rabanastre. He knew Vaan was a street kid, and saw that he was capable of getting through a slew of Imperial Gaurds and architected safeties and traps to get into a vault. When you're in unfamiliar territory, you want a guide.
Basch's weakness is explained exactly as it is. The poor bastard was starved and in shackles for a prolonged period of time. You could tell just by the looks of him that he was emaciated and wasting. Of course he's going to be weak, or, in this instance, at about the same capability as a 17 year old street kid.
There are flaws mind you, but there are explanations, even within the plot. This makes things a little more palateable.
FF6 didn't really have that affect in this particular context. You didn't bank your points. You had espers equipped and earning sp helped you learn the spells that particular esper gave you.
When you learned all the spells, however, SP was wasted. In X and XII, you bank your points.
Don't forget this particular installment of FF, either. XII is a continuation of the FF:T storyline. 700 years later if I remember correctly.
I stopped playing the franchise very soon after X came out. I heard 11 going MMO, and decided I was quits from Final Fantasy for awhile. I was almost disgusted when I heard about X-2. I envisioned Square as another of of EA's drooling lap dogs and almost swore off not only the Final Fantasy series but the company in general.
That is until I heard about what they did with XII.
Picked it up, I thought maybe it could possibly have some redeeming qualities that could perhaps restore my faith in Square. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out the entire game was a redeeming quality. It hit on every level a Final Fantasy is supposed to hit on and even accomplished some things that none other had. The most important is the story. Final Fantasies are operas, let's not kid ourselves. FFIV, VI, VII and VIII are very popular examples of this, empires are rising and falling, romances flourish and are tragically ended. Armies clash, the alliance and enslavement of great and powerful beings to aid or detriment the protagonist are occurring, you are affecting change on a world-wide level. The way in which XII tells its story is classic, classy, and every bit as intrigueing as a Grecian Epic.
Even the music lets on to the scope you are supposed to be on, deep and heart-wrenching. Bass kicks in when you're in danger, treble when you're coming out of a situation the victor. The music is supposed to make you feel as if the whole world depends on your actions, as the world DOES depend on you. They made a wise move by letting the music fade to the background a little and let the sound effects, the ambient sounds of the world around you help do the job. It's alot like the Rise of the Valkyries is heard softly in the distance as you hear the gnashing and clangs of combat, the entire Division of Imperial swordsmen draws near as klaxons sound.
Another level that this particular installation hit home on was showing you just the level of scope you're dealing with. In previous installations, you didn't particularly get a feel for just how menacing your foes are. Behemoths seemed to be caricatures, your party merely felling another foe as you continued on your path. The genious of the battle system they are implementing (Which is from KOTOR, BTW) is that now you know JUST how menacing a behemoth is. He's huge, he makes your party look like stick figures. Demon Walls are now exactly as their name implies, and actually seem capable of crushing the party to death if you don't defeat it in time. Espers are giant, their weapons mighty and powerful, seemingly appropriate for the amount of damage they do. The legendary weapons you procure that somehow have to justify the vast differential in damage output now do so graphically. Of course the Zodiac Spear is going to hit hard, look at the damn thing! You're seeing both the weapon and how it is used now, in previous installations you merely saw your party line up side by side, with your opponent in the distance. Now you see actual combat, not some spikey haired blonde with an emo outfit disappearing in midair and materializing 5 feet over an enemy with his sword pointed downwards. A man with an affinity for the deadly arts charges, raises his weapon and brings it down with devastating affect.
In all, FFXII got back to FF's roots. Telling an epic story, and getting you involved. Something I hope will be SOP for Square-Enix for the foreseeable future.
Just an aside, as someone with a little history in metallurgy:
Pattern-Welded is actually a weaker sum of the metals that went into it's production. Molecular cohesion just does not happen, the metals aren't being smelted or wrought together in a way that is conducive to improving the strength of iron. No matter if it's 2 steels being sandwiched (which is basically the process used when going for aesthetics alone) or even if it's a tool steel being etched by laser or in an acid bath; which is also done.
Damascene steel on the other hand, is extremely strong. It can hold an edge while still maintaining flexibility. The silica content as well as the amount of tungsten present in the sand from which the iron was extracted is a synergistic combination. Silica providing flexibility (I'm hacking a metallurgical textbook in half to get where I'm going, forgive me), with the tungsten giving the steel a little UMMF that none other had at the time--bands of tungsten carbide. In itself completely inflexible but present as it is in most blades it actually is given alot of room to move.....by the silica.
Similar qualities are present in the tungsten rich sands of some Japanese waters. However not in the same manner, the Japanese had an ingenious forging method, sometimes referred to as the 1000-leaf method by those speaking of it in English.
REAL Damascus steel is still legendary not only among sword and knive enthusiasts, but amont metallurgists as well. It is for all intensive purposes a wonder-metal, even by today's standards. In today's day of Titanium, Monel, Inconel and Carpenter-20, Damascus is still something people in the field whistle about.
Wrong. Paradigm shift was coined by Thomas Kuhn to note a wide shift in belief among the scientific community.
:-P
Among the paradigm shifts in history are the shifts from Ptolemaic Astronomy to Copernican Astronomy. Einstein's theory of General Relativity was a paradigm shift from Maxwell's theory. Newtonian physics represented not necessarily a shift but rather a unification of general physical science; still considered by many to be a paradigm shift.
A commonheld belief among a vast portion of the scientific community is considered a "Paradigm". Take here for instance, the theory of Global Warming. A great chunk of researchers believe in it while the rest more or less hold to the theory of Cyclic Climate. While there is alot of argument about what today's climate changes are representative of, we have yet to see a Kuhnian Paradigm Shift. As such it will likely never happen, 20 years from now the temperatures will stop rising and start dropping (strangely enough as both theories predict), and people will come to light in realization of the historical precedent that points towards Cyclic Climate.
I'm fairly certain a wiki search will do a much better job than I at describing exactly what Kuhn meant by a Paradigm Shift, for I'm too lazy to get into the more elaborate explanation; but you'll probably find more or less the same answer. I'm only lucky enough to be covering this in one of my humanities courses
Of course, the result would be an immediate war against the Antarctic, the Arctic and other places in the axis of rotation.
MOD HIM UP!!!!!!!!!!!
Occam's razor though would point me towards "It's just colder. Global warming is just so much hot air!" ;-)
Occam's Razor wouldn't point you anywhere.
And I quote: "Thou Shalt Not Pluralize Needlessly."
It would tell you to find out if "Global Warming" is complicating itself too much, and rule it out if it was. Occam never intended people to simply discount things if it was a complicated explanation; people just bastardized and butchered his words.
Paradigm Shifts!!
;)
Not a buzzword, dude. Haven't heard a marketing team use it yet. I'll bet you don't even know what it means
Art asked something similar about "if it works, why aren't we getting any information from the future right now?" The excuse was that you can only send info back so far as the machine has been turned on.
;)
... hence the reason he was on Art Bell, and why we're discussing him on /. per an exciting-sounding but ill-expressed story.
Dude, that's not any reason to discount this man. For the simple fact of the matter that this is how time travel would work, if it did. Hawking theorized this particular aspect of time travel a couple of decades ago.
I'm going to sum up the reasoning behind it in a way you just might, barely, be able to maybe concievably understand. Chaos theory, for one, is something we can all accept to be more or less true. Given enough time, anything that can happen, will happen. For the purpose of saving ourselves a headache, we must also assume our future time of existence must also be infinite, unless proven otherwise. If it were possible to travel further back in time than a time machine existed, and anything that can happen will happen, life as we know it probably wouldn't exist. Some jackass would've travelled back in time to destroy the earth, enlighten us, etc. etc.. The mere fact that we haven't yet seen one uber-powerful soldier jump out of a wormhole and start riddling people with tiny little holes with plasma or laser rifles, affirms this notion that time travel is only possible as far back in time as there was a machine to do so. The only way it doesn't prove Hawking right is if we all unanimously agree to start thermonuclear war in the very near future and off ourselves promptly if we survive the initial bombings. Either that or an asteroid we haven't seen hits within the next 5 years or so, and all mankind dies. Long story short, either Hawking is right or we all die in very short order; I think I'll go with the notion of a paraplegic genius knowing what he's talking about.
Now, to accept time travel is possible, one must also be able to concede that time is something tangible. It has to be substantial, something you can capture and control, so to speak. The notion of a time machine is to "capture" time, and control it. Many physicists that cede time travel to be possible also make the point to show that if it is, time is alot like a fabric. A time machine would be a "hole" punched into a gathered up fold in this fabric. The more time passes while this machine is "capturing" time is merely more folds of the fabric being brought together while a hole is punched in it. This is another point to be made that we can only jump through this particular hole, where it is in the fabric, which would also be in relation to it's location. We wouldn't be able to jump from 2006 in the Mojave to 3006 in Taiwan, for example, well we might be able to but we do not know yet just how vast the reach of a particular time machine would be. The machine would both have to "capture" time and be able to send data through the "holes" to another location that might be outside of the folded fabric, so to speak.
Another interesting fact is that we do not yet know if there exists a natural occuring phenomena that might also capture time and allow for it to be controlled. We'd actually be a little arrogant to say time travel is only possible as far back as a time machine existed, or before we created something capable of capturing time; because there might yet already exist naturally occurring rifts in time. They would, however, be somewhere far from here in all likelihood, so for all practical purposes; we might as well assume that matter or information can only be transmitted as far back (or forward, for that matter) as the time machine was/is/will be switched on
Unfortunately, people who do not understand a subject adequately cannot differentiate between the crackpot's impressive yet incomprehensible rantings vs. your reasoned informed explanations of why the crackpot is wrong
If you're going to spout off about understanding a subject and talk down to someone using that as a high-horse, then know what the fuck you're talking about.
Here's a suggestion!
Border control!
Mark fence jumpers with permanent ink, throw some gluey substance in with it that will dry and be practically impossible to remove, and you have a bonified way to tell which of the people making your food jumped the border or came here on visa.
There is a finite amount of evil in the world, but an infinite amount of stupidity.
Stupidity doesn't get along well with happy coincidence.
That the voting problems just happen to be with democrats voting along the party lines, again; in a state notorious for voting fraud isn't a product of stupidity. That this problem smiles on a political party who just so happens to have the sympathies of the manufacturer of this particular problematic machine, not a product of stupidity. That this problem might occur in other states and districts, definitely not going to be a product of stupidity. Nothing about this situation alludes to laziness, stupidity, or incompetence.
I'm not saying this is evil, but I see only evidence that points to this being a product of planning and imposed circumstances.
By the way, Ghandi's original quote was "Do not attribute to evil what laziness could easily explain."
And Einstein's original quo........nevermind, it's lost on you anyway.
I mean to include some scientists and philosophers in this group-- pretty much anyone who talks about "the mind" as a separable entity from "the body".
That would comprise about all of the scientific community. Among scientists, the argument about the existence of the mind and it's correlation to the body could easily be split into 3 schools of thought. The Materialists (Hobbes), the Idealists (Berkeley) and the Dualists (Descartes). Across the realms of science and philosophy, the mind is always seperate from body in as much as they can't be divided into eachother. About the closest we get to the consideration of mind being OF the body is Hobbes' Materialism.
Even Descartes was forced to consider the mind and one's body two different substances, in his theory of psycho-physical dualism. Idealists do not consider bodies to exists, but that all we see, all our interactions are of the mind.
Science has not done much to define the existence of mind and body and their differences and interactions. Idealists died out in the 18th and 19th century, but as far as what we believe about the mind, most subscribe either to the Cartesian or Materialist school of thought.