They hate Scalzi because his books are crap. He wins because he's got a big megaphone. Redshirts was at best an ok send up of a really old joke, but somehow it won the Hugo for best novel. Why? Not because it's good
I picked it up in a bookstore because it looked fun. I wasn't disappointed.
Was it the best SF book I read that year? Probably not. Was it "crap"? Hell no. Was it better than its competition for the Hugo that year? Since I never even heard of those other books, I'm going with a "yes".
I thought the whole point of Waze was that you could see where other drivers (including perhaps certain people you want to track) are. It puts an icon representing you on the road (with your choice of avatar) for others to see. It doesn't exactly take mad haxxor skillz to track someone with Waze, it just takes an account.
If you only want a single big company to track you, that's what Google Maps is for.
You've already made it clear there is nothing you're willing to debate in this thread,
Yes! Exactly. Finally you are getting it. I never asked for a "debate", and my opinion (which is all I provided) is not something that requires convincing you in order to be valid. Honestly. I'm good.
With a little more insight, you might even reflect on why lots of folks might get irate when treated this way. Particularly women and minorities, who already (for whatever reason) feel like white males don't value their opinions and experiences, unless they happen to share them.
This is what public "debate" on behalf of a wealthy elite looks like
This is exactly the kind of behavior, from people convinced they are always right (stereotypically young white male supporters), that earned the moniker "Bernie Bros". Its fine to call someone else a "Murderer" or "Shill" (or, er... "wealthy elite") on little or no evidence. But say something that isn't their orthodoxy, and they come set up their throne in your mentions and DEMAND you go do all kinds of work to somehow mathematically prove yourself:
Bring me some data, peon.
If you foolishly try to go do their bidding, then its,
You call that data? Its insufficient here and here. Its too soft here, and too lumpy here. Go read this article, then bring me more data, peasant!.
That's the elitist "Bro" attitude. I'm going to stick my arm out here, and its your job to repeatedly run into my fist until you give up. Giving up means I win.
Well, if you think that makes you win, then fine you win. I forfeit from the start. Now go take your throne and your winning self elsewhere, thank you. I have work to do for people who actually give me something in return.
All emulators need validation.... Load up any emulator's website like SCUMM and you'll see a list of games that work and games that have problems and games that flat out don't work.
In fact, that's one of the dead giveaways. For a true emulator, that's the kind of list you'd expect; here's software that works, here's software that is known not to work, here's software that works but has issues, and anything not listed is unknown.
If things are ported one-by-one, you'd expect just a simple list of what works. Which is exactly what MS has.
Also, if they were simply emulating off of a VM, you'd be playing the games that work off of your CD, and you might even be able to try some that aren't on their list, and they may or may not work.
Instead, it just used the CD to make sure you own the game, and then downloads the "real" game program in its entirety from their servers. That tells you it isn't the same data as is on the disk. In other words, they ported the game to whatever machine (real or virtual) is running it. You can't just try any old game and see what happens, like you could do if they were simply emulating.
Also, can you reference ANYTHING Microsoft has ever put out that would make anybody think that there wasn't a whitelist of compatible games?
Sorry, but I am not your personal Google monkey. Pay me for my time, or go do your own research.
Its really pretty simple. They used the term "Backward Compatability". Yes, Microsoft itself calls it that. That term has a meaning. What they have done does not match that meaning. These are all facts.
What people (yourself included) do with this information is their own business.
Not to say that real ones don't exist, but I've long been skeptical about the super-misogynistic Bernie Bros and (without getting overly conspiratorial) they've just felt false-flag to me.
Don't forget racist. You can't follow a black or Hispanic person or who tweets about politics and supports someone other than Bernie (or even one who supports nobody at all) without being regularly treated to watching them get buried under racist tweets from Sanders "supporters".
Its a tempting thought that the BernieBros are some clever Republican astroturfing, but there are just too many of them for it to be that. Face it, the calls are coming from inside the house.
I like Bernie himself, and even a lot of his proposals. But you could spend $1 Billion, and not even make a good start on correcting all the misconceptions his supporters are tweeting.
So we're celebrating someone with schizophrenia and active hallucinatory delusions?
Just like Joan of Arc in France, yes.
FWIW, an astounding percentage of Americans report having personal interaction with God or Jesus. You may be skeptical of that (I am), but I'd be careful about running around calling all of them delusional or schizophrenics.
If you punch me in the face for an hour, should your grandchildren apologize to my grandchildren for you being an idiot?
If you never did? And got away with it? Most certainly yes, your family should apologize.
...unless they really enjoy having a feud. I guess I don't know you. Perhaps you are from Tug Fork, West Virginia, and that's how people roll there. I'm not gonna judge.
The hardware and software though is so significantly different that each game has to have specific configuration within the emulator and a lot of work to make each game work.
For some reason I don't remember having to change out our old Xbox 360 out for another one when we changed games.
You're talking with someone who has actually worked on a emulator from scratch (M68020 with custom hardware). What you describe above? Where the supposed VM doesn't match the original machine enough to run its software without significant extra work, custom to each piece of software? That's not a true emulator of the hardware.
And firearms instructors like me will cringe at the way she has the muzzle covered with her hand and pointed at her face. Don't do that.
I suspect there's a long history of portraits available to you for good "don't" illustrations. You could probably teach your whole class off of this one (although they were at least all pointed in the general vicinity of the ground).
You win. That one's awesome. Probably more stylized than representational, but this is a tiny picture on a $20, not a history document.
I personally think she is a great choice, she is kind of canonical American - a little bit wild, independent, and she made things happen rather than just letting a bad system break her.
I kind of like a motto for the second amendment of "Tubman knew what guns were for, you should too
And this kind of thing is why I think Southerners, particularly those in my Scotts-Irish "highland" border state part of the country, rather than being upset as some here have implied, are likely to embrace her. She had the kind of fighting spirit they admire, and was always packing heat.
Don't worry about the whole slavery thing. White southerners forgave themselves for that a long time ago.
Tubman was born a slave and went on to become an anti-slavery crusader
This is about the most boring summary of her life possible.
Try this:
Short version - She was America's Joan of Arc.
Long version - She was beaten nearly to death as a teenage slave, and heard voices the rest of her life, which she believed to be God. Often did what God (the voice) told her to. Listening to God she
Escaped slavery (no mean feat for anyone)
Went back to the south at least 13 times, helping about 80 more escape. She reported avoiding slave catchers multiple times by listening to her voice of God and following his instructions. She was never once captured
Helped out with the recruiting for John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. It failed miserably, but likely helped bring on the war that destroyed slavery. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was originally an ode to John Brown.
Conducted multiple "scouting" (spy) missions into Confederate territory during the Civil War
Led a military assault on several plantations during the war, liberating about 750 slaves (most of the men of which promptly joined the Union army)
The "backwards compatibility" is nothing but a big steaming pile of marketing.. Xbox One isn't even in the slightest backwards compatible with 360 games.
Instead, what they are doing is slowly porting 360 games to the Xbox One, one by one. If you happen to have a 360 game on their list of ported games, you put the CD in the Xbox, just to prove you actually own it. Then the Xbox One will download the entire ported game from their servers to its hard-drive, and allow you to play it.
Don't go buying an Xbox One thinking you can use any old Xbox 360 game you might own. 3 moths ago we did that, and found a whopping 0 of our old 360 games had been ported.
Someone remind me what the word is when you purposely inaccurately describe something, because it will make your product sound more appealing than the accurate description will? I forget these days.
I'm curious whether people naturally game the system because people are inherently greedy and dishonest...
Its this, sad to say. To misquote Kay from MiB: a person is nice, but people are greedy dishonest animals.
Let me illustrate with a (somewhat personal) story from the early 20th Century.
The Osage Nation in Oklahoma did one thing really smart (and lucky) that most other tribes didn't manage: When the federal government forced (yes forced) them to distribute their land to individual tribe members, they kept the mineral rights for the tribe. Then, in 1898, oil was found on their land.
Picture Beverly Hillbillies on a tribal scale. For a while, the regular checks from the oil revenues were not just enough to live off of, but enough to qualify recipients as fairly wealthy. By the 1920's they were like a rural Oklahoma version of Kuwait.
So in come the greedy a-holes. At first they satisfied themselves with declaring Indians "incompetent", and using the government guardianship to steal their money. But what they eventually started doing is finding themselves uneducated older Osages, tricking them into "adopting" them, and then killing them. At least 60 Osages were murdered in the first half of the 1920's.
The FBI was called in, but what finally stopped the carnage was when a law was passed that prevented anyone without provable Osage "blood" from inheriting an oil headright. Eventually the money tapered down to not enough to live on by itself, but the laws remain.
And this is why I, as an adoptee raised in an Osage family, don't get to call myself Osage. I'm not on the rolls with my Father and his people, because once upon a time money was involved, and people in general are sociopathic assholes.
[link to The Smith Act] which was eventually found to be unconstitutional
Sort of. This is the famous law against "advocating the violent overthrow of the government". The law itself wasn't unconstitutional, and is still on the books. However, it can't be used to throw people in jail just for party affiliation (like was probably intended). SCOTUS held that it has to be an actual specific incitement to violence, not just some distant "come The Revolution" talk.
I may not be a huge Sanders fan, but Sanders frankly is comedy gold. So if you are going for funny, it ain't that hard. But placing pictures of him next to Stalin like they were buddies isn't even the slightest bit funny. Even if you're trying to poke fun at your own ignorance for not being able to tell the difference between anybody to the left of you and a Communist, that's just sad, not funny. So clearly, humor was not the goal here.
This isn't comedy; its straight up character assassination. If his lawyers don't try to go after it while he's running for high office, they aren't doing their jobs.
So it looks like they are planning to name it something else...Morons
This whole Boaty McBoatface thing has been a publicity goldmine. Seriously, who here even knew there was a UK National Environmental Research Council before this? But the whole circus goes away about 2 weeks after they refuse the name.
If they actually name the ship Boaty McBoatface, the publicity will effectively live as long as the ship does. Interest will tapir off, sure, but the name is such a grabber that any time there's a chance to put Boaty McBoatface in a newspaper story, it will be there.
The Marketing people at the NERC seriously need to tie the "suits" up in a closet for a few weeks until they can get Boaty christened and launched. Its for the good of the organization. Throw enough gin and vermouth in there for a few martinis and they'll be fine.
He doesn't claim to be a scientist. He calls himself a "Science Guy". This is a complete straman that Ms. Palin made to beat up on rather than address the actual science that many people, (yes, including that "Science Guy") are trying to bring up. But Mr. Nye could turn out to be 10 kittens in a man-suit, and it wouldn't change anything.
This kind of attack on a person rather than the idea is the kind of thing you do when your actual argument is crap and you know it.
Slashdot Mirror
They hate Scalzi because his books are crap. He wins because he's got a big megaphone. Redshirts was at best an ok send up of a really old joke, but somehow it won the Hugo for best novel. Why? Not because it's good
I picked it up in a bookstore because it looked fun. I wasn't disappointed.
Was it the best SF book I read that year? Probably not. Was it "crap"? Hell no. Was it better than its competition for the Hugo that year? Since I never even heard of those other books, I'm going with a "yes".
I'm not sure that calling them right-wing is accurate, more like anti left-wing,
That's pretty much what "right-wing" means these days.
I thought the whole point of Waze was that you could see where other drivers (including perhaps certain people you want to track) are. It puts an icon representing you on the road (with your choice of avatar) for others to see. It doesn't exactly take mad haxxor skillz to track someone with Waze, it just takes an account.
If you only want a single big company to track you, that's what Google Maps is for.
You've already made it clear there is nothing you're willing to debate in this thread,
Yes! Exactly. Finally you are getting it. I never asked for a "debate", and my opinion (which is all I provided) is not something that requires convincing you in order to be valid. Honestly. I'm good.
With a little more insight, you might even reflect on why lots of folks might get irate when treated this way. Particularly women and minorities, who already (for whatever reason) feel like white males don't value their opinions and experiences, unless they happen to share them.
I won't hold my breath, but a guy can dream.
Hmm, I see, you were posting your vague impression as if it were a fact. I should have known better...
Sorry, Bro.
This is what public "debate" on behalf of a wealthy elite looks like
This is exactly the kind of behavior, from people convinced they are always right (stereotypically young white male supporters), that earned the moniker "Bernie Bros". Its fine to call someone else a "Murderer" or "Shill" (or, er... "wealthy elite") on little or no evidence. But say something that isn't their orthodoxy, and they come set up their throne in your mentions and DEMAND you go do all kinds of work to somehow mathematically prove yourself:
Bring me some data, peon.
If you foolishly try to go do their bidding, then its,
You call that data? Its insufficient here and here. Its too soft here, and too lumpy here. Go read this article, then bring me more data, peasant!.
That's the elitist "Bro" attitude. I'm going to stick my arm out here, and its your job to repeatedly run into my fist until you give up. Giving up means I win.
Well, if you think that makes you win, then fine you win. I forfeit from the start. Now go take your throne and your winning self elsewhere, thank you. I have work to do for people who actually give me something in return.
Sorry, but I'm not your personal Google monkey. Do your own research.
All emulators need validation. ... Load up any emulator's website like SCUMM and you'll see a list of games that work and games that have problems and games that flat out don't work.
In fact, that's one of the dead giveaways. For a true emulator, that's the kind of list you'd expect; here's software that works, here's software that is known not to work, here's software that works but has issues, and anything not listed is unknown.
If things are ported one-by-one, you'd expect just a simple list of what works. Which is exactly what MS has.
Also, if they were simply emulating off of a VM, you'd be playing the games that work off of your CD, and you might even be able to try some that aren't on their list, and they may or may not work.
Instead, it just used the CD to make sure you own the game, and then downloads the "real" game program in its entirety from their servers. That tells you it isn't the same data as is on the disk. In other words, they ported the game to whatever machine (real or virtual) is running it. You can't just try any old game and see what happens, like you could do if they were simply emulating.
Also, can you reference ANYTHING Microsoft has ever put out that would make anybody think that there wasn't a whitelist of compatible games?
Sorry, but I am not your personal Google monkey. Pay me for my time, or go do your own research.
Its really pretty simple. They used the term "Backward Compatability". Yes, Microsoft itself calls it that. That term has a meaning. What they have done does not match that meaning. These are all facts.
What people (yourself included) do with this information is their own business.
Not to say that real ones don't exist, but I've long been skeptical about the super-misogynistic Bernie Bros and (without getting overly conspiratorial) they've just felt false-flag to me.
Don't forget racist. You can't follow a black or Hispanic person or who tweets about politics and supports someone other than Bernie (or even one who supports nobody at all) without being regularly treated to watching them get buried under racist tweets from Sanders "supporters".
Its a tempting thought that the BernieBros are some clever Republican astroturfing, but there are just too many of them for it to be that. Face it, the calls are coming from inside the house.
I like Bernie himself, and even a lot of his proposals. But you could spend $1 Billion, and not even make a good start on correcting all the misconceptions his supporters are tweeting.
So we're celebrating someone with schizophrenia and active hallucinatory delusions?
Just like Joan of Arc in France, yes.
FWIW, an astounding percentage of Americans report having personal interaction with God or Jesus. You may be skeptical of that (I am), but I'd be careful about running around calling all of them delusional or schizophrenics.
If you punch me in the face for an hour, should your grandchildren apologize to my grandchildren for you being an idiot?
If you never did? And got away with it? Most certainly yes, your family should apologize.
...unless they really enjoy having a feud. I guess I don't know you. Perhaps you are from Tug Fork, West Virginia, and that's how people roll there. I'm not gonna judge.
The hardware and software though is so significantly different that each game has to have specific configuration within the emulator and a lot of work to make each game work.
For some reason I don't remember having to change out our old Xbox 360 out for another one when we changed games.
You're talking with someone who has actually worked on a emulator from scratch (M68020 with custom hardware). What you describe above? Where the supposed VM doesn't match the original machine enough to run its software without significant extra work, custom to each piece of software? That's not a true emulator of the hardware.
That's porting the software.
And firearms instructors like me will cringe at the way she has the muzzle covered with her hand and pointed at her face. Don't do that.
I suspect there's a long history of portraits available to you for good "don't" illustrations. You could probably teach your whole class off of this one (although they were at least all pointed in the general vicinity of the ground).
You win. That one's awesome. Probably more stylized than representational, but this is a tiny picture on a $20, not a history document.
I personally think she is a great choice, she is kind of canonical American - a little bit wild, independent, and she made things happen rather than just letting a bad system break her. I kind of like a motto for the second amendment of "Tubman knew what guns were for, you should too
And this kind of thing is why I think Southerners, particularly those in my Scotts-Irish "highland" border state part of the country, rather than being upset as some here have implied, are likely to embrace her. She had the kind of fighting spirit they admire, and was always packing heat.
Don't worry about the whole slavery thing. White southerners forgave themselves for that a long time ago.
why wasn't this done via a popular vote?
It was. Tubman won.
Anything else you want me to Google for you, while I have it up?
Tubman was born a slave and went on to become an anti-slavery crusader
This is about the most boring summary of her life possible.
Try this:
Short version - She was America's Joan of Arc.
Long version - She was beaten nearly to death as a teenage slave, and heard voices the rest of her life, which she believed to be God. Often did what God (the voice) told her to. Listening to God she
Personally, I hope they use her Civil War woodcut portrait, which shows her holding a rifle.
The "backwards compatibility" is nothing but a big steaming pile of marketing.. Xbox One isn't even in the slightest backwards compatible with 360 games.
Instead, what they are doing is slowly porting 360 games to the Xbox One, one by one. If you happen to have a 360 game on their list of ported games, you put the CD in the Xbox, just to prove you actually own it. Then the Xbox One will download the entire ported game from their servers to its hard-drive, and allow you to play it.
Don't go buying an Xbox One thinking you can use any old Xbox 360 game you might own. 3 moths ago we did that, and found a whopping 0 of our old 360 games had been ported.
Someone remind me what the word is when you purposely inaccurately describe something, because it will make your product sound more appealing than the accurate description will? I forget these days.
I'm curious whether people naturally game the system because people are inherently greedy and dishonest...
Its this, sad to say. To misquote Kay from MiB: a person is nice, but people are greedy dishonest animals.
Let me illustrate with a (somewhat personal) story from the early 20th Century.
The Osage Nation in Oklahoma did one thing really smart (and lucky) that most other tribes didn't manage: When the federal government forced (yes forced) them to distribute their land to individual tribe members, they kept the mineral rights for the tribe. Then, in 1898, oil was found on their land.
Picture Beverly Hillbillies on a tribal scale. For a while, the regular checks from the oil revenues were not just enough to live off of, but enough to qualify recipients as fairly wealthy. By the 1920's they were like a rural Oklahoma version of Kuwait.
So in come the greedy a-holes. At first they satisfied themselves with declaring Indians "incompetent", and using the government guardianship to steal their money. But what they eventually started doing is finding themselves uneducated older Osages, tricking them into "adopting" them, and then killing them. At least 60 Osages were murdered in the first half of the 1920's.
The FBI was called in, but what finally stopped the carnage was when a law was passed that prevented anyone without provable Osage "blood" from inheriting an oil headright. Eventually the money tapered down to not enough to live on by itself, but the laws remain.
And this is why I, as an adoptee raised in an Osage family, don't get to call myself Osage. I'm not on the rolls with my Father and his people, because once upon a time money was involved, and people in general are sociopathic assholes.
[link to The Smith Act] which was eventually found to be unconstitutional
Sort of. This is the famous law against "advocating the violent overthrow of the government". The law itself wasn't unconstitutional, and is still on the books. However, it can't be used to throw people in jail just for party affiliation (like was probably intended). SCOTUS held that it has to be an actual specific incitement to violence, not just some distant "come The Revolution" talk.
I may not be a huge Sanders fan, but Sanders frankly is comedy gold. So if you are going for funny, it ain't that hard. But placing pictures of him next to Stalin like they were buddies isn't even the slightest bit funny. Even if you're trying to poke fun at your own ignorance for not being able to tell the difference between anybody to the left of you and a Communist, that's just sad, not funny. So clearly, humor was not the goal here.
This isn't comedy; its straight up character assassination. If his lawyers don't try to go after it while he's running for high office, they aren't doing their jobs.
So it looks like they are planning to name it something else...Morons
This whole Boaty McBoatface thing has been a publicity goldmine. Seriously, who here even knew there was a UK National Environmental Research Council before this? But the whole circus goes away about 2 weeks after they refuse the name.
If they actually name the ship Boaty McBoatface, the publicity will effectively live as long as the ship does. Interest will tapir off, sure, but the name is such a grabber that any time there's a chance to put Boaty McBoatface in a newspaper story, it will be there.
The Marketing people at the NERC seriously need to tie the "suits" up in a closet for a few weeks until they can get Boaty christened and launched. Its for the good of the organization. Throw enough gin and vermouth in there for a few martinis and they'll be fine.
The sad thing is, this quote was plausible enough for her that I felt compelled to go check, just to be sure.
He doesn't claim to be a scientist. He calls himself a "Science Guy". This is a complete straman that Ms. Palin made to beat up on rather than address the actual science that many people, (yes, including that "Science Guy") are trying to bring up. But Mr. Nye could turn out to be 10 kittens in a man-suit, and it wouldn't change anything.
This kind of attack on a person rather than the idea is the kind of thing you do when your actual argument is crap and you know it.