What would you call a government that believed in free market economics but was a theocracy? (See the American Dominionist movement.) It's totally possible to have violent social and political oppression in pro-capitalist societies. Look at South Korea under General Park Chung-hee.
By your own oversimplified political quiz, economic freedoms are the province of the right, but social freedoms are the province of the left and not the right as you strangely suggest. (Try answering A to the first 5 questions and D to the last five if you don't believe me!)
Also, it's worth noting that the fascist movements in Europe started as "third way" alternatives to democracy and communism and almost all rose to power with the aid of significant industry collaboration (as a bulwark against leftist proletariat movements). You need to read more about 1930s Spanish, Italian, and German history -- with especial emphasis on the allies of the fascist movements -- before condemning the idea as ridiculous. They stand in stark contrast to the totalitarian left movements within the same countries.
Lastly, and a crony-capitalist system can't be described as leftist either because there's no concept of distributive justice or social equality, nor is there any lip-service paid to it like in corrupt communist countries that gave inner party members privileges over the masses.
I always point out that organizing is the antithesis of anarchy [...]
No it's not. Anarchy is not chaos; it's a lack of rule. Chaos is just a natural result.
There's nothing about being an anarchist that prevents you from listening to someone else's advice. The key difference between an anarchist and, say, someone who believes in electing a leader is the expectation that once a leader is chosen that everyone *must* listen to them. An anarchist is free to nod his head at the advice and then go off and do his own thing.
Sure, people might complain at him and he may or may not be made to feel guilty, but there's no binding law making him do what he's told or providing for remedies for him not doing so. That's anarchy -- the lack of legal / community-imposed consequences for your actions; it's not some boneheaded, punk-rock poser obsession with telling everyone, "F--- off," who might tell you what would be a good idea to do.
Apparently, when you were a kid, you had a very juvenile view of the concept, and adulthood doesn't seem to have cured you of it.
Unequivocally, yes. Odious though it may be, the alternative of defining standards over what is and isn't a politically acceptable view to have is even worse. The solution to hate speech is to speak back and to be more persuasive, and not to simply censor it. Truly obnoxious speech will generally lose out in a society committed to freedom, though it may take some time.
No, really, look. An unsigned int uses the exact same space as a signed int but allows for twice the max value. The only thing they're wasting is a single bit. Using a 64-bit int "where the were using the rest of the bits for something else" is equivalent to using 2 32-bit ints, only the latter option doesn't require bit-shifting or masking.
By this reasoning, the price of food should be nearly infinite. Without good food and healthcare you die, after all.
You can't possibly be delusional enough to equate the choice between "What am I going to eat today?" and "Which doctor do I trust my life with?" For one thing, 99%+ of people making food choices in the country today do not have their lives threatened by not getting food right now. Food is cheaply and easily available in modern society; hence the obesity problem, actually. Second, the "best available" food is not in any way tied to its ability to keep you alive. You can survive on beans and rice just was well as you can on a Kobe beef steak dinner, and eating the more expensive steak will not improve your survivability chances over that over eating simpler fare. Third, consumers generally have time to inform themselves about their food choices before making them whereas most medical decisions are made quickly and with no ability to compare the prices of rival services due to (a) emergency and (b) the unwillingness of healthcare providers to divulge such information ahead of time.
It doesn't matter that a diseased man would pay a million dollars for a pill or that a starving man would pay a million dollars for an apple; if someone can supply that pill for $5 or that apple for $1, suppliers will compete on price and won't stop competing until the market stops being excessively attractive to additional investment.
Again, you're delusional to think that the food market is driven by starving people like the medical market is driven by dying and sick people. There's an entirely different set of psychological motivations behind purchasing decisions, and anyone who wants to deny this essential truth is playing with abstract mathematics in the name of politcal dogma instead of taking a good, long view at realistic policy decisions.
Anyone who understands free market capitalism should understand why it doesn't work for healthcare. The rational, informed, value-seeking man does not exist in the healthcare world. Real healthcare patients are seeking the best treatment that they can afford, not the cheapest healthcare that will probably get the job done. That's the kind of market where prices go up instead of down because the only downward price pressure is whether or not a provider can find enough people that can pay at the prices they offer.
Matters of life and death are not ruled by bargain-seeking behavior, and thus the entire driving forces of supply and demand are thrown completely out of whack. Anyone who's spent any time studying economics should recognize that the fundamental assumption of modern economic theory doesn't apply here.
He was making "thoughtless comments" about Jews for nearly two decades before 9-11. It was not an isolated incident, and it's not excused because he's half-Jewish like the poster I was replying to suggested.
Also, mental illness is not a free "get a pat on the head card" for every horrible thing you say. Some things need to be decried.
I have had the worst trouble with any entity that I ever owed money to with doctor's offices. Thanks to the time it can take to go through all the insurance paperwork, it can be MONTHS before a debt is finally billed to you so that you can clear it. This only gets worse when you consider the massively outsourced structure of medicine today. I've had miscellaneous expenses from various outsourced diagnostic clinics that tests were sent off take over 8 months to reach me after a visit, and I've had to deal with phantom late charges generated two months after bills were completely paid off!
The last thing I want is a credit system determining how important of a patient I am based on the ineptitude of other doctors at billing me correctly.
Seems to me a part jewish guy can make comments like that just like a part black guy can make nigger jokes.
It's one thing to make jokes about the flaws of your own community, a la Chris Rock or Jeff Foxworthy.
It's another thing to call for the detention of an entire people, the execution of hundreds of thousands of its leaders, and the destruction of its places of worship, a la Bobby Fischer. He was a Holocaust denier, and an advocate for a new one, and if you think that's equivalent to making jokes about trashy people within your own community, then you're completely mad.
Actually, the man succumbed to mental illness. Hopefully you're never in a position to pass any meaningful judgement on people who have these kinds of issues.
His mental illness absolves him of any legal responsibility for his actions, but it doesn't make him a good and wonderful person.
I still wouldn't want to be friends with a raging bigot regardless of why he's a raging bigot. I mean, the shape of his mental illness is partially shaped by the sane portions of his mind -- it's not like there's a magical Jew-hating portion of the brain that got damaged.
When's the last time you used your DVD/CDRW drive?
December 20th, when I burned a copy of the answers to my last final of the semester to CD on my MacBook to turn in. Considering that roughly 70-80% of the students in my law school classes that use notebooks are using Macs, that's a decision that they made which may be add odds with the use of Macs in an educational setting in the future.
I have two young boys (age 1 and age 3) who like to watch me play nearly any videogame I throw in (they're big fans of the Katamari series). Frankly, their perception of any violence or other supposed influences at this point is moot, considering their attention span is near zero at this age.
Ever think there might be a causal relationship behind that complete lack of an attention span?
Oh, wow. That's pretty much my story. I had all those games for the Vic-20 too (except Choplifter) plus an educational game my parent got called "LCD Mine" where you had to figure out the least common denominator between two numbers. (Sounds pretty lame, huh -- but I was hooked on it as a little kid because it was a chance to show off to my parents as well as the first game I ever beat.)
I remember that Moon Base was tough as nails, though. I also remember using the color settings and special keys to type out little maps of trails leading across fantasy kingdoms. Man, that takes me back...
It is and isn't a proper name. God has many names, all of which should be treated with respect, though the tetragrammaton is supposedly his "true" name. The prohibition on "taking the Lord's name in vain" is observed quite diligently by many Jews to the point that even a word of indirection (liked "God") is not invoked casually.
The other parent doesn't have matching genes. We can add genes to pigs (like those needed to make more human-compatible organs for transplant) and expect the traits to be passed down the line.
Read "Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords." Most of the new directions that they're taking the Fighter and Paladin can be traced to the Warblade and Crusader classes from this book.
In essence, the martial maneuvers in Bo9S don't take away choice from the enemies and force the DM to make them behave like robots. They just make the choice of attacking another enemy harder to do. Take the martial stance "Thicket of Blades." What it does is make 5 ft steps provoke Attacks of Oppotunity, making it hard to get away from the user without taking some free damage. A monster can always opt to just take an AoO, but the Defender classes will make them pay for it.
At no point is the PC getting to mind control enemies -- he's just making the decision to ignore the PC fraught with consequences.
My friends and I had been playing AD&D for over 20 years. We started with chainmail. Went through basic, not the red and blue books, 1st editon and into 2nd. Frist edition was a mess. Inconsistan rules, typos, and shitty book construction but we had a fucking ball with it. 2nd edition was better, less rule problems and some needed rule changes.
3rd edition is crap. Most of the soul of the game is gone. The books look nice but it's not D&D. It's a bad imitation with D&D on the cover. Come on, magic using dwarves, evil rangers, and wizards carrying swords. That goes against the very core of the game.
Your style of play sounds rigid and unimaginative, defined entirely by the borders of old school D&D. I mean, you can't imagine a wizard carrying a sword? Have you never once tried out another role-playing game in 20 years of play? Do you not read fantasy books or watch fantasy movies or anime or comics or anything by Howard or Lieber (or Tolkien) or anything other than D&D novels?
You belong to a subset of fossilized gamers that aren't worth supporting for a company. You have what you like, you don't need anything else, and frankly you don't sound like you'd even look at another game unless it had the D&D brandname on it. Why should WotC spend ANY time looking to support you and your outdated notions of gaming.
Gaming has evolved significantly since the 70s & 80s when old D&D was made. Old D&D is like COBOL -- it gets the job done for the people who are still using it decades after it was last relevant, but there's no reason to design new products in emulation of it. We've moved on to better, more expressive, and more coherent tools. New gamers expect more of games than the byzantine rules (like the convoluted initiative system) and arbitrary restrictions (like racial level caps) of 2e. Play should be fast, fun, and should enable people to create the characters and stories they find most fascinating. 4e is moving in that direction and leaving 2e in the dust where it belongs, with all the rest of the gaming dinosaurs.
And frankly, if you haven't bought a new gaming product in 20 years, then why should WotC give a damn about what you want instead of what young people want? You aren't their customer, and they're a business. Go play OSRIC if your old books are starting to fall apart.
Slashdot Mirror
What would you call a government that believed in free market economics but was a theocracy? (See the American Dominionist movement.) It's totally possible to have violent social and political oppression in pro-capitalist societies. Look at South Korea under General Park Chung-hee.
By your own oversimplified political quiz, economic freedoms are the province of the right, but social freedoms are the province of the left and not the right as you strangely suggest. (Try answering A to the first 5 questions and D to the last five if you don't believe me!)
Also, it's worth noting that the fascist movements in Europe started as "third way" alternatives to democracy and communism and almost all rose to power with the aid of significant industry collaboration (as a bulwark against leftist proletariat movements). You need to read more about 1930s Spanish, Italian, and German history -- with especial emphasis on the allies of the fascist movements -- before condemning the idea as ridiculous. They stand in stark contrast to the totalitarian left movements within the same countries.
Lastly, and a crony-capitalist system can't be described as leftist either because there's no concept of distributive justice or social equality, nor is there any lip-service paid to it like in corrupt communist countries that gave inner party members privileges over the masses.
I always point out that organizing is the antithesis of anarchy [...]
No it's not. Anarchy is not chaos; it's a lack of rule. Chaos is just a natural result.
There's nothing about being an anarchist that prevents you from listening to someone else's advice. The key difference between an anarchist and, say, someone who believes in electing a leader is the expectation that once a leader is chosen that everyone *must* listen to them. An anarchist is free to nod his head at the advice and then go off and do his own thing.
Sure, people might complain at him and he may or may not be made to feel guilty, but there's no binding law making him do what he's told or providing for remedies for him not doing so. That's anarchy -- the lack of legal / community-imposed consequences for your actions; it's not some boneheaded, punk-rock poser obsession with telling everyone, "F--- off," who might tell you what would be a good idea to do.
Apparently, when you were a kid, you had a very juvenile view of the concept, and adulthood doesn't seem to have cured you of it.
Is hate speech free speech?
Unequivocally, yes. Odious though it may be, the alternative of defining standards over what is and isn't a politically acceptable view to have is even worse. The solution to hate speech is to speak back and to be more persuasive, and not to simply censor it. Truly obnoxious speech will generally lose out in a society committed to freedom, though it may take some time.
Firstly, I'm one of the most connected people I know and I hardly knew people still existed in the flesh.
They don't.
No, really, look. An unsigned int uses the exact same space as a signed int but allows for twice the max value. The only thing they're wasting is a single bit. Using a 64-bit int "where the were using the rest of the bits for something else" is equivalent to using 2 32-bit ints, only the latter option doesn't require bit-shifting or masking.
By this reasoning, the price of food should be nearly infinite. Without good food and healthcare you die, after all.
You can't possibly be delusional enough to equate the choice between "What am I going to eat today?" and "Which doctor do I trust my life with?" For one thing, 99%+ of people making food choices in the country today do not have their lives threatened by not getting food right now. Food is cheaply and easily available in modern society; hence the obesity problem, actually. Second, the "best available" food is not in any way tied to its ability to keep you alive. You can survive on beans and rice just was well as you can on a Kobe beef steak dinner, and eating the more expensive steak will not improve your survivability chances over that over eating simpler fare. Third, consumers generally have time to inform themselves about their food choices before making them whereas most medical decisions are made quickly and with no ability to compare the prices of rival services due to (a) emergency and (b) the unwillingness of healthcare providers to divulge such information ahead of time.
It doesn't matter that a diseased man would pay a million dollars for a pill or that a starving man would pay a million dollars for an apple; if someone can supply that pill for $5 or that apple for $1, suppliers will compete on price and won't stop competing until the market stops being excessively attractive to additional investment.
Again, you're delusional to think that the food market is driven by starving people like the medical market is driven by dying and sick people. There's an entirely different set of psychological motivations behind purchasing decisions, and anyone who wants to deny this essential truth is playing with abstract mathematics in the name of politcal dogma instead of taking a good, long view at realistic policy decisions.
Since when has any massively invasive data-profiling service ever been about making the consumer's life better?
Anyone who understands free market capitalism should understand why it doesn't work for healthcare. The rational, informed, value-seeking man does not exist in the healthcare world. Real healthcare patients are seeking the best treatment that they can afford, not the cheapest healthcare that will probably get the job done. That's the kind of market where prices go up instead of down because the only downward price pressure is whether or not a provider can find enough people that can pay at the prices they offer.
Matters of life and death are not ruled by bargain-seeking behavior, and thus the entire driving forces of supply and demand are thrown completely out of whack. Anyone who's spent any time studying economics should recognize that the fundamental assumption of modern economic theory doesn't apply here.
He was making "thoughtless comments" about Jews for nearly two decades before 9-11. It was not an isolated incident, and it's not excused because he's half-Jewish like the poster I was replying to suggested.
Also, mental illness is not a free "get a pat on the head card" for every horrible thing you say. Some things need to be decried.
I have had the worst trouble with any entity that I ever owed money to with doctor's offices. Thanks to the time it can take to go through all the insurance paperwork, it can be MONTHS before a debt is finally billed to you so that you can clear it. This only gets worse when you consider the massively outsourced structure of medicine today. I've had miscellaneous expenses from various outsourced diagnostic clinics that tests were sent off take over 8 months to reach me after a visit, and I've had to deal with phantom late charges generated two months after bills were completely paid off!
The last thing I want is a credit system determining how important of a patient I am based on the ineptitude of other doctors at billing me correctly.
Wouldn't that be an essential part of the NASA MMO experience, though?
Seems to me a part jewish guy can make comments like that just like a part black guy can make nigger jokes.
It's one thing to make jokes about the flaws of your own community, a la Chris Rock or Jeff Foxworthy.
It's another thing to call for the detention of an entire people, the execution of hundreds of thousands of its leaders, and the destruction of its places of worship, a la Bobby Fischer. He was a Holocaust denier, and an advocate for a new one, and if you think that's equivalent to making jokes about trashy people within your own community, then you're completely mad.
Actually, the man succumbed to mental illness. Hopefully you're never in a position to pass any meaningful judgement on people who have these kinds of issues.
His mental illness absolves him of any legal responsibility for his actions, but it doesn't make him a good and wonderful person.
I still wouldn't want to be friends with a raging bigot regardless of why he's a raging bigot. I mean, the shape of his mental illness is partially shaped by the sane portions of his mind -- it's not like there's a magical Jew-hating portion of the brain that got damaged.
When's the last time you used your DVD/CDRW drive?
December 20th, when I burned a copy of the answers to my last final of the semester to CD on my MacBook to turn in. Considering that roughly 70-80% of the students in my law school classes that use notebooks are using Macs, that's a decision that they made which may be add odds with the use of Macs in an educational setting in the future.
I have two young boys (age 1 and age 3) who like to watch me play nearly any videogame I throw in (they're big fans of the Katamari series). Frankly, their perception of any violence or other supposed influences at this point is moot, considering their attention span is near zero at this age.
Ever think there might be a causal relationship behind that complete lack of an attention span?
I thought monkey hates technology...
Oh, wow. That's pretty much my story. I had all those games for the Vic-20 too (except Choplifter) plus an educational game my parent got called "LCD Mine" where you had to figure out the least common denominator between two numbers. (Sounds pretty lame, huh -- but I was hooked on it as a little kid because it was a chance to show off to my parents as well as the first game I ever beat.)
I remember that Moon Base was tough as nails, though. I also remember using the color settings and special keys to type out little maps of trails leading across fantasy kingdoms. Man, that takes me back...
One-sided.
It is and isn't a proper name. God has many names, all of which should be treated with respect, though the tetragrammaton is supposedly his "true" name. The prohibition on "taking the Lord's name in vain" is observed quite diligently by many Jews to the point that even a word of indirection (liked "God") is not invoked casually.
I think this may say it better, and I jut bought a house so I really don't want to move yet.
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." - Benjamin Franklin
Financial security is a form of security.
Man, if *Sun* can't afford to maintain a Solaris data center, then who can?
I know you're joking, but I'll take cancer over Alzheimer's. Even if the drug directly caused it. I may die in miserable pain, but I'll die as me.
The other parent doesn't have matching genes. We can add genes to pigs (like those needed to make more human-compatible organs for transplant) and expect the traits to be passed down the line.
Read "Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords." Most of the new directions that they're taking the Fighter and Paladin can be traced to the Warblade and Crusader classes from this book.
In essence, the martial maneuvers in Bo9S don't take away choice from the enemies and force the DM to make them behave like robots. They just make the choice of attacking another enemy harder to do. Take the martial stance "Thicket of Blades." What it does is make 5 ft steps provoke Attacks of Oppotunity, making it hard to get away from the user without taking some free damage. A monster can always opt to just take an AoO, but the Defender classes will make them pay for it.
At no point is the PC getting to mind control enemies -- he's just making the decision to ignore the PC fraught with consequences.
My friends and I had been playing AD&D for over 20 years. We started with chainmail. Went through basic, not the red and blue books, 1st editon and into 2nd. Frist edition was a mess. Inconsistan rules, typos, and shitty book construction but we had a fucking ball with it. 2nd edition was better, less rule problems and some needed rule changes.
3rd edition is crap. Most of the soul of the game is gone. The books look nice but it's not D&D. It's a bad imitation with D&D on the cover. Come on, magic using dwarves, evil rangers, and wizards carrying swords. That goes against the very core of the game.
Your style of play sounds rigid and unimaginative, defined entirely by the borders of old school D&D. I mean, you can't imagine a wizard carrying a sword? Have you never once tried out another role-playing game in 20 years of play? Do you not read fantasy books or watch fantasy movies or anime or comics or anything by Howard or Lieber (or Tolkien) or anything other than D&D novels?
You belong to a subset of fossilized gamers that aren't worth supporting for a company. You have what you like, you don't need anything else, and frankly you don't sound like you'd even look at another game unless it had the D&D brandname on it. Why should WotC spend ANY time looking to support you and your outdated notions of gaming.
Gaming has evolved significantly since the 70s & 80s when old D&D was made. Old D&D is like COBOL -- it gets the job done for the people who are still using it decades after it was last relevant, but there's no reason to design new products in emulation of it. We've moved on to better, more expressive, and more coherent tools. New gamers expect more of games than the byzantine rules (like the convoluted initiative system) and arbitrary restrictions (like racial level caps) of 2e. Play should be fast, fun, and should enable people to create the characters and stories they find most fascinating. 4e is moving in that direction and leaving 2e in the dust where it belongs, with all the rest of the gaming dinosaurs.
And frankly, if you haven't bought a new gaming product in 20 years, then why should WotC give a damn about what you want instead of what young people want? You aren't their customer, and they're a business. Go play OSRIC if your old books are starting to fall apart.