Hey, it could work in the people's favor though. What if thousands went on a campaign to click the "terr'ist" button on all the articles having to do with Cameron himself?
So, does that mean those games are badly written, or that the next gen consoles are underpowered crap?
Both. I have a fairly modest build PC that severely outperforms either of the next-gen consoles. Granted the PC cost about 3 times as much as a console, but for having the added productivity benefit it was an investment rather than a money sink. That said, this debacle really exposes the shitty programmers that Ubisoft must have. Getting a PC game right is difficult just by the fact that there's such a wide range of hardware configurations that could create a support nightmare, so in this a rocky release can be forgiven...to a point. Once the bugs have been identified, ironed out, and fully patched, it should be able to run near perfect on most systems meeting recommended specs (imho, 3 months after release should be enough time to be able to fix issues on edge case hardware issues). But consoles are stationary targets where the performance is known and static from device to device across the same platform. With consoles, if your game will not run stable on a static platform by the time you're wanting to release the game: #1 you have no clue what you're doing; #2 You need to delay the release date until you learn wtf you're doing wrong with #1.
As a developer for a console, one should physically have the platform available to test on; have a spec sheet from the manufacturer outlining the details of what every single console of that model is capable of in terms of raw CPU clock speed, RAM space, VidRAM space, Video clock speed, along with guidelines on the minimum and recommended resources that need to be free for the system OS to keep the system stable; and one needs to perform their own benchmarks on the system to find out optimal performance levels as well as peak performance levels. Finally, if one extensively tests on the actual hardware and finds that it's not running anywhere close to optimally, the developers have done fucked up somewhere. It does not matter one iota if the console is underpowered. It's a given that they're going to be and blaming the fixed and stationary target that is a console platform is nothing but a strawman to distract away from the fact that the developers don't know what in the hell they're doing.
Don't think I'm defending Microsoft here because I am old enough to remember Microsoft at its worst and still have the deep seated hatred of Gates and Balmer era MS. Hell, anti-trust BS aside I still hate them for what they did to my MechWarrior franchise alone! However, under the new leadership that seems to be taking the company towards an era of Glasnost and Perestroika, the hatred is given pause as I wait for the next dick move that may never come. At the very least, Microsoft has moved into a position that is no more or less "evil" than Google (yes, do no evil no longer applies here) or Apple. Given this, I wonder how many people here truly rationally hate MS anymore as opposed to hatred through nostalgia (like me) or hatred through "it's the way we do things around here" syndrome. As a developer that uses MS products and support in his profession, and develops Linux, Android, and Arduino apps as a hobby, I still prefer the current open source way of doing things over the MS way... but as far as the hatred? It cannot be said yet that Microsoft is the same company it was in the Balmer days. They at least *look* like they're moving towards a path that looks similar to the one Sun Microsystems was beating through.
That was the idea of having the generator in the loop in the first place as it would reduce the electrical cost of running the server cluster. I'm not expecting that it would be entirely self-sufficient, but it should at least be able to mitigate some of the costs and possibly easily be converted into backup power if the mains go down by adding a broiler to the system that would feed the extra heat needed to ramp up electricity production in that contingency.
Still need hot water don't you? Unless you're an office space too small to hold a restroom...but then why would you have a data-center cornered off? Granted, the idea is American Centrist from me being located in North America; but also by living in the Southern USA I can understand the desire to not add to the heat of the air. The best response I have to that is that maybe by the time I can start building this dream, adsorption chillers may be a viable solution. Aside from hope-tech, it's a design hole that I admit I personally haven't the solution for yet that may limit this plan for cooler climates at the moment.
I've yet the capital to build a prototype since the dream server alone would cost about 140k to build, but my theory goes like this: Cold water line runs through copper lines to wick away the heat from the procs. The hot water/ steam gets pushed through a steam turbine generator before it hits a relay junction where an electronic valve will either direct the still hot water/steam through the heating system or to a large hot water tank that would provide hot water for the building. The same tank would also recycle any unused water back through the lines to get reheated as it cooled.
Through this system, there would be an elevated cost for water consumption, mitigated by it being a partially closed system that recycles as much water as doesn't get used, and help with a reduction in electric and heating costs as opposed to the costs associated with operating the server and cooling in a system that does not make use of the waste heat. With this plan, one thing I haven't solved (though, in implementation this may solve itself...if I ever get the ability to) is how to get the water temperature suitably high to boil and create steam while maintaining a safe operating temperature for the 48 processors.
If the USSR production facilities couldn't keep up with the demand to feed its workforce and generate more efficient equipment... how could their economy seriously keep up with us revving up our military industrial complex to new heights?
Because you can plow your computer into a sidewalk full of pedestrians. Totally great analogy, that.
Unwitting user clicks on a cute link that installs malware on the system to turn it into a zombie for a botnet. Unwitting user's system is now participating in an attack that drains hundreds of millions of $$$ from the bank accounts of tens of millions of people that now have lost all their life savings (somewhat similar in outcome to the damage caused by driving on a NYC sidewalk)... all because they followed the cute instead of paying attention what they were doing and following the rules of the Internet superhighway. I'd say the analogy is fairly apt.
The reason I lump all three prequels into the "suck" category is the fact that Anakin Skywalker as portrayed by Christensen completely breaks continuity from Darth Vader as he was in the original trilogy. The prequels would be fair movies on their own if they didn't break that continuity of character that needed to flow into the story of the original trilogy (plot holes not withstanding). Vader was brooding, analytical, calculating, and intolerant. Granted the expanded universe books have been declared null and void to the discussion of the movies, but if I remember right, those books have said that the brooding and calculating traits were with Anakin from the beginning when he was found by the Jedi; which contributed to his being consistently alienated from the Jedi Order. Looking at the portrayal in the prequels (regardless of this is to be blamed on Christensen or the writers), that Anakin was whiny, impatient, reckless, and thoughtless right up to the moment he burned. Essentially, Anakin had the complete emotionally opposite core personality from Vader. People's core personality won't change like that unless they suffered major brain injury (not something that was indicated when he burned in the fire pits).
Another part of the prequels that broke the Anakin story for me was the whole messiah complex that was going on. On one hand, I can see the irony of inserting that into the story. "He's the one who will restore balance to the Force." Well, he did. He increased the weight on the Dark Side to counteract the complacency of a Light Side that had been suffering from having too much power for too long. But it's also something that contributed to breaking the character continuity. Vader would have come from a child who was bullied by everyone, and set up to fail often (nurturing his intolerance for the failure of others). Someone who was berated every time he opened his mouth (becoming a man who only speaks when absolutely necessary). Someone who was chastised for putting a voice to his pain (emotional expression is nullified). Someone perpetually on the outside of society's cliques (perpetually the loner). Someone who's survival and success depended on his ability to quickly create a strategy of subversion and the balls to act on it. Anakin was none of this. He was the entitled brat that always wanted more, never shut up about how he was supposedly wronged, always sought acceptance of others, and never came up with a plan of action on his own. Whenever he was bullied he was always rescued, beginning with Qui-Gon rescuing him from Watto and ending with Palpatine rescuing him from the fire pits.
Think back to the prequels: Anakin was a capable fighter, but he always got into a situation he needed to be saved from...and there was ALWAYS someone there to pick him up and kept him from absolutely failing. When did we ever see Vader needing to be saved from a situation? Hell, when did Vader ever truly lose control of a situation? Maintaining situational control is not something an entitled brat ever learns to do. When they start losing control of a situation, self-control will go out of the window and there wouldn't be any regrouping to recalculate, only perpetual knee-jerk reactions. Those with an entitlement complex don't adapt well to adversity. Those who are constantly beaten down, however, do; and Vader's success is through his ability to quickly formulate and act on a new plan.
tl;dr version using chess piece powers as reference: Prequel Anakin was a pawn that does not offer a logical character path to have grown into Vader's Queen to Palpatine's King.
No. That's the style of site built by marketers who don't know what the fuck they're doing with Bootstrap. "Oooh...that's a nice feature, throw it in. I like how that moves, throw it in. What? Organize thoughts into actual informative pages? Screw that, we'll just put everything we have out there on one page and make the user scroll for miles and we'll just dazzle them with all the cool moving images and eye candy! Beats having to work to actually compile information." And it's not just start ups that fall victim to this bullshit. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are just as guilty, though MS shows a bit more restraint on the flashiness. It shows a complete lack of self control and critical thought in their product message. Seriously, dude, I've seen geoshitty sites that were built better and actually conveyed meaningful information about what they were selling.
This is exactly the problem though. The prime distributions have been going to systemd and outright dumping support for all other init systems wherein if say I want the package system of Debian but I want to go with a more classical init system, I have to download a system with systemd and then work to retrofit my init of choice to replace it. I was about to say that even the current book of LinuxFromScratch has gone in favor of setting up systemd based on when I looked at 7.6 a few weeks ago, but that's no longer true. Apparently it's been changed back to sysvinit since then and the systemd version has been given a separate link on the page.
I have no problem with distros offering systemd as an option as much as they offer Gnome, KDE, LXDE, etc as options. But don't force me on an upgrade path where I have to use systemd as an init if I've already got my servers set up for using init scripts and don't really have the time to go through configuring a new init system on a *hobby* network. This is what I'm looking at for several home servers when CentOs 6.5 LTS loses support. My options are going to be migrate to CentOs 7 and deal with systemd configuration headaches, or migrate to another distro and learn that ecosystem of doing things. Either way, I'm going to have to learn something new, not in itself a bad thing, which is why I've been looking at LFS more closely and actually weighing that route against going to a *BSD variant. If I'm going to be forced into changing some aspect of the way I'm doing things, I'm going to chose the path that looks close enough to familiar with the path I've been on or will give me plenty of practice with its new to me method (changing from yum to apt-get is an easily adaptable change, going from yum to portage, not quite so easy; going from yum to self-compiling... LFS will definitely give me plenty of practice by the time it's installed...what does *BSD use and how does it compare?), and looks like there won't be much of any further operational changes in the distant future (distant being relative to computer terms: 5-10 years).
When the government put out regulations where companies couldn't use lead-based solder in consumer electronics products anymore (it's still widely available for private purchase), all electronic devices began suffering significantly shorter operational life. The lead kept the solder from developing micro-fractures that eventually caused joints to arc, or disconnecting altogether. If you're handy with a soldering iron, you can often resurrect dead electronics by touching heat to the joints which has the effect of making the solder become molten again and thus eliminating the fractures. Under constant operating conditions it can take about 2-3 years for the fractures to progress to the point where a device will no longer work properly. It's one reason why you hear about Red-Rings-of-Death, Red lights of death, etc. from gaming systems released in the last 10-15 years while a good portion of classic systems from the Atari, to the Oddessy2, to the Sega Master System, to the N64 can still be found 20-30 years later still running as well as they did on day one. You always hear the phrase "They don't make 'em like they used to." It's because literally (in the very literal sense, not figuratively speaking type of literally), they don't.
Ever watch the Matrix? The Voters are part of the "system" and will fight tooth and nail to avoid the pain of being yanked out of it. And any one of them could rat you out to an agent of the "system" for causing too much fuss.
Yup. Every vote counts. Every vote counts just as much as the rest of the 80k - 130k votes in any given federal level election. The more people who vote the less power each vote gets, and despite your idealist views the biggest and most powerful groups fighting each other are members of two specific parties. I can and have told people until I'm blue in the face(figuratively) about independent candidates and their policies and tried to convince them to vote the 3rd party. I'm a classical liberalist surrounded by Party Republicans that won't believe that a vote for their party leadership is no different from a vote for a Democratic leader.
Personally, I don't vote big money, deliberately (How many of these Politicians, even the independent ones, are poor without financial backing anyway?). Never have. I try to convince others to vote my way. Never works. Never makes a difference. So why vote at all? So I can repeat the "I told you so" line when shit goes as expected. And when you come into any forum and tell people about "opportunit[ies] to start making the changes [we're] all bitching for" there's only two types of people you're preaching to: The deaf or the choir. The political temperature I've seen on/. leans more towards the choir, but there's more than enough deaf here as well; and we are by no means a reflective sample of the world at large that tends to be mostly deaf. Good luck changing minds that willfully will not change.
More like, a burger flipper cannot make Big Macs(Wolverine) for McDonalds(Marvel), leave that employment, then legally be able to start working for Burger King(DC) making the same Big Macs, or start up his own Burger Joint offering the same Big Macs; but he can make Big Macs for the occasional private barbecue. There's nothing that can stop him from generally flipping burgers, as your statement indicates.
In which case they are also under the guidelines of the Constitution to ensure a separation of Church from State. You're welcome to practice whatever religion you want...as long as it's not interfering with matters of State on State owned grounds; like a State College or Public School where education is a Matter of State.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, it could work in the people's favor though. What if thousands went on a campaign to click the "terr'ist" button on all the articles having to do with Cameron himself?
So, does that mean those games are badly written, or that the next gen consoles are underpowered crap?
Both. I have a fairly modest build PC that severely outperforms either of the next-gen consoles. Granted the PC cost about 3 times as much as a console, but for having the added productivity benefit it was an investment rather than a money sink. That said, this debacle really exposes the shitty programmers that Ubisoft must have. Getting a PC game right is difficult just by the fact that there's such a wide range of hardware configurations that could create a support nightmare, so in this a rocky release can be forgiven...to a point. Once the bugs have been identified, ironed out, and fully patched, it should be able to run near perfect on most systems meeting recommended specs (imho, 3 months after release should be enough time to be able to fix issues on edge case hardware issues). But consoles are stationary targets where the performance is known and static from device to device across the same platform. With consoles, if your game will not run stable on a static platform by the time you're wanting to release the game: #1 you have no clue what you're doing; #2 You need to delay the release date until you learn wtf you're doing wrong with #1.
As a developer for a console, one should physically have the platform available to test on; have a spec sheet from the manufacturer outlining the details of what every single console of that model is capable of in terms of raw CPU clock speed, RAM space, VidRAM space, Video clock speed, along with guidelines on the minimum and recommended resources that need to be free for the system OS to keep the system stable; and one needs to perform their own benchmarks on the system to find out optimal performance levels as well as peak performance levels. Finally, if one extensively tests on the actual hardware and finds that it's not running anywhere close to optimally, the developers have done fucked up somewhere. It does not matter one iota if the console is underpowered. It's a given that they're going to be and blaming the fixed and stationary target that is a console platform is nothing but a strawman to distract away from the fact that the developers don't know what in the hell they're doing.
If you remove all of those entities from being able to charge sales tax, how we will build new stadiums?
From game ticket revenue?
Don't think I'm defending Microsoft here because I am old enough to remember Microsoft at its worst and still have the deep seated hatred of Gates and Balmer era MS. Hell, anti-trust BS aside I still hate them for what they did to my MechWarrior franchise alone! However, under the new leadership that seems to be taking the company towards an era of Glasnost and Perestroika, the hatred is given pause as I wait for the next dick move that may never come. At the very least, Microsoft has moved into a position that is no more or less "evil" than Google (yes, do no evil no longer applies here) or Apple. Given this, I wonder how many people here truly rationally hate MS anymore as opposed to hatred through nostalgia (like me) or hatred through "it's the way we do things around here" syndrome. As a developer that uses MS products and support in his profession, and develops Linux, Android, and Arduino apps as a hobby, I still prefer the current open source way of doing things over the MS way... but as far as the hatred? It cannot be said yet that Microsoft is the same company it was in the Balmer days. They at least *look* like they're moving towards a path that looks similar to the one Sun Microsystems was beating through.
That was the idea of having the generator in the loop in the first place as it would reduce the electrical cost of running the server cluster. I'm not expecting that it would be entirely self-sufficient, but it should at least be able to mitigate some of the costs and possibly easily be converted into backup power if the mains go down by adding a broiler to the system that would feed the extra heat needed to ramp up electricity production in that contingency.
Still need hot water don't you? Unless you're an office space too small to hold a restroom...but then why would you have a data-center cornered off? Granted, the idea is American Centrist from me being located in North America; but also by living in the Southern USA I can understand the desire to not add to the heat of the air. The best response I have to that is that maybe by the time I can start building this dream, adsorption chillers may be a viable solution. Aside from hope-tech, it's a design hole that I admit I personally haven't the solution for yet that may limit this plan for cooler climates at the moment.
I've yet the capital to build a prototype since the dream server alone would cost about 140k to build, but my theory goes like this: Cold water line runs through copper lines to wick away the heat from the procs. The hot water/ steam gets pushed through a steam turbine generator before it hits a relay junction where an electronic valve will either direct the still hot water/steam through the heating system or to a large hot water tank that would provide hot water for the building. The same tank would also recycle any unused water back through the lines to get reheated as it cooled.
Through this system, there would be an elevated cost for water consumption, mitigated by it being a partially closed system that recycles as much water as doesn't get used, and help with a reduction in electric and heating costs as opposed to the costs associated with operating the server and cooling in a system that does not make use of the waste heat. With this plan, one thing I haven't solved (though, in implementation this may solve itself...if I ever get the ability to) is how to get the water temperature suitably high to boil and create steam while maintaining a safe operating temperature for the 48 processors.
...to name one of the few things Coca Cola doesn't stick their name on yet AFAIK...
Couldn't resist.
If the USSR production facilities couldn't keep up with the demand to feed its workforce and generate more efficient equipment... how could their economy seriously keep up with us revving up our military industrial complex to new heights?
Because you can plow your computer into a sidewalk full of pedestrians. Totally great analogy, that.
Unwitting user clicks on a cute link that installs malware on the system to turn it into a zombie for a botnet. Unwitting user's system is now participating in an attack that drains hundreds of millions of $$$ from the bank accounts of tens of millions of people that now have lost all their life savings (somewhat similar in outcome to the damage caused by driving on a NYC sidewalk)... all because they followed the cute instead of paying attention what they were doing and following the rules of the Internet superhighway. I'd say the analogy is fairly apt.
The reason I lump all three prequels into the "suck" category is the fact that Anakin Skywalker as portrayed by Christensen completely breaks continuity from Darth Vader as he was in the original trilogy. The prequels would be fair movies on their own if they didn't break that continuity of character that needed to flow into the story of the original trilogy (plot holes not withstanding). Vader was brooding, analytical, calculating, and intolerant. Granted the expanded universe books have been declared null and void to the discussion of the movies, but if I remember right, those books have said that the brooding and calculating traits were with Anakin from the beginning when he was found by the Jedi; which contributed to his being consistently alienated from the Jedi Order. Looking at the portrayal in the prequels (regardless of this is to be blamed on Christensen or the writers), that Anakin was whiny, impatient, reckless, and thoughtless right up to the moment he burned. Essentially, Anakin had the complete emotionally opposite core personality from Vader. People's core personality won't change like that unless they suffered major brain injury (not something that was indicated when he burned in the fire pits).
Another part of the prequels that broke the Anakin story for me was the whole messiah complex that was going on. On one hand, I can see the irony of inserting that into the story. "He's the one who will restore balance to the Force." Well, he did. He increased the weight on the Dark Side to counteract the complacency of a Light Side that had been suffering from having too much power for too long. But it's also something that contributed to breaking the character continuity. Vader would have come from a child who was bullied by everyone, and set up to fail often (nurturing his intolerance for the failure of others). Someone who was berated every time he opened his mouth (becoming a man who only speaks when absolutely necessary). Someone who was chastised for putting a voice to his pain (emotional expression is nullified). Someone perpetually on the outside of society's cliques (perpetually the loner). Someone who's survival and success depended on his ability to quickly create a strategy of subversion and the balls to act on it. Anakin was none of this. He was the entitled brat that always wanted more, never shut up about how he was supposedly wronged, always sought acceptance of others, and never came up with a plan of action on his own. Whenever he was bullied he was always rescued, beginning with Qui-Gon rescuing him from Watto and ending with Palpatine rescuing him from the fire pits.
Think back to the prequels: Anakin was a capable fighter, but he always got into a situation he needed to be saved from...and there was ALWAYS someone there to pick him up and kept him from absolutely failing. When did we ever see Vader needing to be saved from a situation? Hell, when did Vader ever truly lose control of a situation? Maintaining situational control is not something an entitled brat ever learns to do. When they start losing control of a situation, self-control will go out of the window and there wouldn't be any regrouping to recalculate, only perpetual knee-jerk reactions. Those with an entitlement complex don't adapt well to adversity. Those who are constantly beaten down, however, do; and Vader's success is through his ability to quickly formulate and act on a new plan.
tl;dr version using chess piece powers as reference: Prequel Anakin was a pawn that does not offer a logical character path to have grown into Vader's Queen to Palpatine's King.
"Kim Kardashian being eaten alive by an Anaconda."
Gives a different perspective to the line: "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon"
I strenuously object! I don't want to have to do the research! /s
At the very least we should be able to shoot bolts of lightning from our arse.
It's a healthy marriage...
No. That's the style of site built by marketers who don't know what the fuck they're doing with Bootstrap. "Oooh...that's a nice feature, throw it in. I like how that moves, throw it in. What? Organize thoughts into actual informative pages? Screw that, we'll just put everything we have out there on one page and make the user scroll for miles and we'll just dazzle them with all the cool moving images and eye candy! Beats having to work to actually compile information." And it's not just start ups that fall victim to this bullshit. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are just as guilty, though MS shows a bit more restraint on the flashiness. It shows a complete lack of self control and critical thought in their product message. Seriously, dude, I've seen geoshitty sites that were built better and actually conveyed meaningful information about what they were selling.
Dammit, I'm a programmer not a mathematician! Since when do we have to write out proofs for a wild allegation? I thought this was Slashdot!
This is exactly the problem though. The prime distributions have been going to systemd and outright dumping support for all other init systems wherein if say I want the package system of Debian but I want to go with a more classical init system, I have to download a system with systemd and then work to retrofit my init of choice to replace it. I was about to say that even the current book of LinuxFromScratch has gone in favor of setting up systemd based on when I looked at 7.6 a few weeks ago, but that's no longer true. Apparently it's been changed back to sysvinit since then and the systemd version has been given a separate link on the page.
I have no problem with distros offering systemd as an option as much as they offer Gnome, KDE, LXDE, etc as options. But don't force me on an upgrade path where I have to use systemd as an init if I've already got my servers set up for using init scripts and don't really have the time to go through configuring a new init system on a *hobby* network. This is what I'm looking at for several home servers when CentOs 6.5 LTS loses support. My options are going to be migrate to CentOs 7 and deal with systemd configuration headaches, or migrate to another distro and learn that ecosystem of doing things. Either way, I'm going to have to learn something new, not in itself a bad thing, which is why I've been looking at LFS more closely and actually weighing that route against going to a *BSD variant. If I'm going to be forced into changing some aspect of the way I'm doing things, I'm going to chose the path that looks close enough to familiar with the path I've been on or will give me plenty of practice with its new to me method (changing from yum to apt-get is an easily adaptable change, going from yum to portage, not quite so easy; going from yum to self-compiling... LFS will definitely give me plenty of practice by the time it's installed...what does *BSD use and how does it compare?), and looks like there won't be much of any further operational changes in the distant future (distant being relative to computer terms: 5-10 years).
On top of the microfractures I described above, lead-free solder can also develop whiskering which lead to the same sorts of failures.
When the government put out regulations where companies couldn't use lead-based solder in consumer electronics products anymore (it's still widely available for private purchase), all electronic devices began suffering significantly shorter operational life. The lead kept the solder from developing micro-fractures that eventually caused joints to arc, or disconnecting altogether. If you're handy with a soldering iron, you can often resurrect dead electronics by touching heat to the joints which has the effect of making the solder become molten again and thus eliminating the fractures. Under constant operating conditions it can take about 2-3 years for the fractures to progress to the point where a device will no longer work properly. It's one reason why you hear about Red-Rings-of-Death, Red lights of death, etc. from gaming systems released in the last 10-15 years while a good portion of classic systems from the Atari, to the Oddessy2, to the Sega Master System, to the N64 can still be found 20-30 years later still running as well as they did on day one. You always hear the phrase "They don't make 'em like they used to." It's because literally (in the very literal sense, not figuratively speaking type of literally), they don't.
Ever watch the Matrix? The Voters are part of the "system" and will fight tooth and nail to avoid the pain of being yanked out of it. And any one of them could rat you out to an agent of the "system" for causing too much fuss.
Yup. Every vote counts. Every vote counts just as much as the rest of the 80k - 130k votes in any given federal level election. The more people who vote the less power each vote gets, and despite your idealist views the biggest and most powerful groups fighting each other are members of two specific parties. I can and have told people until I'm blue in the face(figuratively) about independent candidates and their policies and tried to convince them to vote the 3rd party. I'm a classical liberalist surrounded by Party Republicans that won't believe that a vote for their party leadership is no different from a vote for a Democratic leader.
Personally, I don't vote big money, deliberately (How many of these Politicians, even the independent ones, are poor without financial backing anyway?). Never have. I try to convince others to vote my way. Never works. Never makes a difference. So why vote at all? So I can repeat the "I told you so" line when shit goes as expected. And when you come into any forum and tell people about "opportunit[ies] to start making the changes [we're] all bitching for" there's only two types of people you're preaching to: The deaf or the choir. The political temperature I've seen on /. leans more towards the choir, but there's more than enough deaf here as well; and we are by no means a reflective sample of the world at large that tends to be mostly deaf. Good luck changing minds that willfully will not change.
More like, a burger flipper cannot make Big Macs(Wolverine) for McDonalds(Marvel), leave that employment, then legally be able to start working for Burger King(DC) making the same Big Macs, or start up his own Burger Joint offering the same Big Macs; but he can make Big Macs for the occasional private barbecue. There's nothing that can stop him from generally flipping burgers, as your statement indicates.
Whatever it is, it's really stinking up the place.
In which case they are also under the guidelines of the Constitution to ensure a separation of Church from State. You're welcome to practice whatever religion you want...as long as it's not interfering with matters of State on State owned grounds; like a State College or Public School where education is a Matter of State.