The post office has to use more fuel to carry all the extra weight in their vehicles.
The post office has to do the same route every day whether they deliver you one piece of mail or 10. Even if they don't have mail for you, they have mail for your neighbors so they have to travel down your road anyway. Driving the route is the biggest contributor of fuel expenses, junk mail just makes it slightly more inefficient. I normally get about 22 mpg on my truck. Towing a trailer around with 1000 pounds of weight in it makes me get about 21 mpg even on hilly routes.
I have to get it from the mail box
Do you check your mail daily? Does carrying a couple ounces of mail to your dwelling cause you so much wear and fuel that you can measure it?
The DMA companies didn't buy my shredder for me, they don't spend 15 minutes shredding junk every week, and they don't subsidize the cost of fuel for the garbage truck that stops at every house to pick up what most likely amounts to tons of extra garbage weight a year.
I don't own a shredder. I heat my house with wood (hey, my heat is carbon neutral and cheaper than oil/coal/gas/electric though it is offset by manual labor) and I save my junk mail to use as starter paper to get the kindling going. It saves me from having to buy paper or starter fluid to get my fires going. Also, even with an extended amount of time, good luck putting my mail back together to get sensitive info when it has all turned to a mishmash of ashes in the bottom of my wood stove. As for my garbage, again, it is the same as the post office. The majority of the fuel is spent just driving to my house. The weight of junk mail is a pittance compared to that. I throw away an average of 3 bags of garbage a week. If I threw away my junk mail, it would be a small fraction of that.
They also don't care if some meth head stops by my mailbox, steals my junk mail, and uses one of the dozens of free credit card offers to steal my identity and start me down the road of a ruined credit rating.
These programs really work... smart DMA people don't want to sell to people who don't like them. It wastes their time and resources to annoy you. Since joining just the federal do not call list, my telemarketing has dropped to near zero (only exceptions being companies I've done business with, politicians and political surveys (yeah, I'm one of those people who gets 1-2 survey calls a month)).
Spam is much, much more annoying to me than junk mail is. Telemarketing probably ranks higher than spam though since it is an immediate interruption in what I'm doing so someone can try to pitch something at me. Email I read at my leisure. It takes me a couple seconds to toss out my junk mail once a day since the envelopes are pretty obvious. I spend much more time making sure spamassassin is correctly classifying spam/ham, setting up whitelists and blacklists, etc than I do dealing with junk mail. Overaggressive filters means I could lose important emails if I don't scan through things carefully. I've never tossed away valid mail (though sometimes I will open a strange looking mail to make sure isn't something important).
At the end of the day, I'm at least wasting the junk mailers money if they send me crap to my mailbox. Even with a bulk rate, they're limited to how much they can send out by the expense of printing it and putting a stamp on it. Spammers incur almost no cost to send out an unlimited amount of garbage. I get 100 spams a day averaging at least 30 megs a month. I have to spend time making sure my network doesn't turn into a bots, cleaning out friends machines which were turned into bots, etc.
Here in NY, gas tax is somewhere around 63 cents per gallon. I drive about 9000 miles a year at 22 mpg. So I buy 409 gallons, paying $258 in fuel taxes. I also paid $1166 in (real) property taxes to my town and county (not counting a separate school tax). Not all of that $1166 goes to road maintenance, but some does. Same with the 8% sales tax that I pay between the county and state.
Anyway, the point being that my $71 in registration fees (which is higher than your average person will pay) doesn't even cover road construction... The vast majority of road money in NY comes from fuel taxes, property taxes and state/federal aid. A good chunk of registration money just goes into operating costs of the DMV.
My dad used to work for the town's highway department. It costs about $100,000 to pave 1 mile of road. There are 93 miles of road in my town which would have a cost of $9,300,000 just to pave. There are about 5100 people old enough to drive. Over the life of the road, each driver would have to pay $1824 to pay for their construction. Roads last about 20 years (give or take depending on how heavily they are used, what types of vehicles are on them, etc). That means each person would have to pay $91 a year in registration fees just to create the roads in the first place. The maximum yearly fee for a passenger vehicle is $56 and for a commercial vehicle its $104. Also note that pickups are generally registered as commercial vehicles which have a lower registration fee than passenger vehicles (my truck at MGVW 4400 pounds is $26 vs $32.25 for a passenger plate).
Now... that is just for the initial paving of the road. It doesn't take into account the cost of resurfacing, sealing, fixing potholes, plowing and sanding, construction of bridges, sluice and drainage, maintenance of shoulders, picking up carcasses and other debris such as fallen trees, signs, lighting, etc. Highway maintenance is the single largest expense coming out of the town budget (the school being funded through its own budget and water/sewer being funded from direct billing like a utility. Fire/EMS is the second most expensive (cheaper because the firemen are volunteers instead of being paid). Police are provided by the county via county taxes).
If you think vehicle registration alone (at least in NY) pays for construction and upkeep of roads, you are very, very sorely mistaken. Take out of my $26 the cost to manufacture plates (lets say $3), the 15 minutes I spent with a DMV employee (easilly over $30/hr by the time you factor in wages, employer tax contributions, pension and benefits), and paperwork and computer/network maintenance ($1) and we're left with about $11.50 of my truck registration going to my town's needing over $200 per person to construct and maintain roads. Throw in my trailer and camper ($17.50 each) and my ATV ($10) and we're still only ending up with me giving them a total of $71 before processing costs... and a lot (most?) people don't have anything more than their vehicle to register. The remainder is made up between a combination of fuel taxes, property taxes, general sales taxes, toll money collected by the state, federal highway monies, etc.
The assumption behind that $758,000 figure is that people would pay so many thousands of dollars for a Gucci bag, whatever that is, and selling a $20 knock off will hurt sales on behalf of Gucci.
Let's revise the statement above.... 50,000 items of merchandise at a value of, say $150,000 in market value might be more realistic.
So you'd guesstimate that a purse might sell for $20 and then assume that all 50k items would sell at $3 each to justify a market value that you pull out of your rear. $750k for face value (ignoring name brand value) doesn't seem that far out to me when you consider it included stereo equipment, leather bags, etc.
From the Fourth Amendment "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
You have the right to not testify against yourself. However, if you go down to the police station and brag that you just committed a crime, your words will be admissible in court against you. Similarly, if you keep a ledger of all the people you shake down, that ledger can be used as evidence that you committed extortion. Also note that you only have the right to not testify against yourself in a criminal case. If you're involved in a civil case and refuse to present evidence that the judge ordered for discovery, expect to go to jail for contempt of court.
What is Unconstitutional is if the police refuse to let you have a lawyer after you've requested one, forcing you to sign a confession you didn't make, forcing you to take the stand against yourself in a criminal case (though if you opt to take the stand to defend yourself, you open yourself to cross examination and can be compelled to testify against yourself which is why many defendants will opt to not take the stand (for example, Scooter Libby)).
Are 10 rapes worse than 1 murder? A rape is something the victim will be scarred with the rest of their life. Sure, they're alive but their relationships (present and future) are certain to suffer, they'll have a hard time trusting people, they might live the rest of their life holed up wondering who is going to get them next. Identity theft may not physically violate you but it can ruin the chances of you buying a house, financing an addition to your home for a new child your wife is already pregnant with, starting a business or even getting your next job... It can haunt you for years and some things may haunt you for the rest of your life (like losing your shot at your dream home). This guy didn't screw up just one life and deny their family members and friends something, this guy screwed up hundreds of lives and the families of those people as well. If you're going to get the same punishment whether or not you commit 1 crime or 100 of the same crimes, what is to stop you from doing it over and over again? If that serial rapist only gets 4 years for the first rape, were the other 9 victims less victimized so they don't count? If he rapes one, goes to jail for 4 years, gets out and rapes another, does he get off scott free since he already served time for raping someone in the past?
This guy messed up the credit of hundreds of people, defrauded thousands of people, cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of damage and expenses to various computers, servers and networks out there. He's hardly a guy who has the potential to get 65 years for a speeding ticket.
Lets say this guy committed 100 counts each of identity theft, money laundering, mail fraud, and wire fraud. That's at least 100 lives he's messed up. 100 people who will have credit problems which take dozens of hours and possibly years to repair. A single murder may be worth, oh, 10 years... but this isn't a single case of identity theft, he is a serial identity stealer so if you want to compare his sentence to a murderer, compare him to a serial killer.
Nobody would seriously say someone who sent 1 spam mail should get 65 years in prison. A day of community service maybe, but not 65 years. If he sent one million spams, he should get one million days of community service. Actually, lets be nice and give him a bulk discount, we'll give him 1 hour for every spam. That's 41667 days or a little over 114 years of community service. This guy knew exactly what he was doing and he deliberately defrauded thousands of people, hijacked other people's computers, ruined people's credit, etc. The entire penal system is about punishing people for harming society and this guy went out of his way, and far beyond just being a rude jerk, to treat other people like crap.
So, the entire census is conducted at exactly the same second? If you take a full day, you're going to have people you already counted who died in that period, people you already counted who have since given birth in that period, etc. Factor in that most censuses normally take weeks and not only do you have births and deaths but you have people who have moved around, you have estimates (which can be completely bogus) of people that you didn't count (such as homeless people), etc. I don't think you can get a census precise to a single person in a sample any bigger than a small or medium sized business. Really, the best you can do is an educated guess and it seems a little silly to not imply any room for error in the guess.
How about the ones who refuse to see energy waste and the upgrade treadmill mentality as bad things because aggregate economic activity is their only measure of prosperity? All of the suggestions after your first two roughly fit the "the tree-huggers want us to go back to living in caves" meme.
Here's the thing... I'm pretty skeptical about anthropogenic global warming. I personally don't really care whether I put 15 tons or 20 tons of CO2 into the air. What I do care about is saving money where I can because I'm on a limited income. Almost all of my lights are CFL, I drive a 9 year old vehicle which is maintained very well and has cost me about $2200 in parts in all of that time (bought it new), my home is well insulated and I heat it with wood (for an average cost of $300 a YEAR in the Rochester, NY area), I do use the clothes line to save money when I can, etc. Really, I'm acting about as green as someone reasonably can who takes care of a disabled father in a rural area (bonus, I have a nice untreated lawn and a couple dozen trees in my yard) and I don't do it for environmental reasons at all, I do it for economical reasons (which is why I framed the common sense things people can do in economical terms). I know with absolute certainty the effect every decision I make has on my wallet. If you want to try to force me to go greener with extreme measures like doubling the cost of my energy, the reaction isn't going to be "happy joy for the environment," it is going to be "fuck the greeny bastards, I'll (proverbially) rot in hell before I ever support them."
Side X says hyperbole A is true and the public finds that it was false, the public turns against side X. Side Y also says that hyperbole B is true and the public finds out that it was false, the public turns against side Y. The public now disbelieves everything side X says as well as everything side Y says, becoming completely cynical to the whole subject and tuning everyone out. How many people actually believe politicians will do what they say they will? Sure, I may vote for someone because what he said was better than his opponent said but in reality, I know that I'll be lucky if he follows through with 10% of his promises. Sure, you'll still have ardent supporters of X and ardent supporters of Y but the majority of people will be pretty apathetic. That's precisely why most politicians won't rail hard in one direction or the other but will try to play the middle. Go hard left and the middle goes (/cough/bullshit). Go hard right and the middle goes (/cough/bullshit). A third party candidate runs and says they aren't like X or Y and almost EVERYONE goes (/cough/bullshit).
Ultimately, people will go with what least defies their sensibilities. If it seems like volcanoes emit more GHGs than humans, they'll go for that. If it seems like the weather has been off for the last couple years compared to what they remember (even if it is within the normal range of variation), they'll go with that. If you tell people the sea levels will rise by 20 feet over the next 100 years (which they expect to mean 2.4 inches a year), they'll think you're fear-mongering and have no credit when it goes up 1 inch in the next 20 years. If you tell people that humans can have absolutely no affect on the climate, they'll point out that pollution has obvious visible effects (because, of course, a few cigarette butts on road by a stop light means that the environment has changed while they don't understand that environmental change and climate change are totally different beasts) and believe you're just protecting the interests of big business and have no credit.
If greenies were as smart as they think they are, they wouldn't be going for the hyperbole... instead, they would say things like
* You should switch to compact fluorescent because it will save you money and the headaches of having to change bulbs.
* You should better insulate your homes so that they leak less heating/cooling because it will save you money.
* Instead of buying a new car every 2-4 years. you should keep the vehicle you have because even if a new car is 10% more efficient (number pulled out of my ass), it would take years longer to make up for the pollution caused by the construction of a new vehicle. Bonus: you'll reduce your debt spending and have more money for your family.
* Use a clothes line whenever possible to dry your laundry. Sure, it is slightly more inconvenient, but you'll save money (it costs about 50 cents for me to dry a load of clothes here).
* Instead of throwing away used but functional durable goods (clothes, computers, vehicles, appliances, whatever), donate them to goodwill or the salvation army. You'll get a tax write off and help other people. Also, buy from these places and you can get great deals, even on brand name/designer products, saving money.
What anti-greeny is going to argue with that stuff? It is all common sense, all of it supports the cause, people see immediate personal benefits and they will think "you know, they (the greenies) are right."
What this all demonstrates, I suppose, is that there isn't a lot of consensus about much of this, except for the basic global warming science itself. Gore is then presenting the worst case scenario of global warming as if there is consensus, when there is not. Is this the only way to make people listen?
The more hyperbolic you get, the more likely you are to make people oppose your position as they find out how much has been exaggerated. Just look at the lead-up to the war in Iraq and the support it had then versus where it is at now. Is a temporary support boost worth losing all of your credibility in the long run?
It's not the mass firings themselves that is at question... it's the reappointing. Congress is supposed to approve all new appointees, but there is a new clause recently passed that allows the president to "temporarily" appoint someone new indefinitely, effectively removing Congress oversight.
Quoth the Constitution (Article 2, Section 2):
"The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session."
The President has ALWAYS had the power to make recess appointments (George Washington made the first one in 1795). It is a vital power which can be absolutely critical in a situation like a time of war where the Secretary of Defense dies and Congress is out of session. It is also important if you have a Senate which interprets "advice and consent" to mean "we won't allow a vote on a President's nominees unless they are the nominee we choose" which eliminates the President's power to pick his appointments and cedes that power to a body that doesn't Constitutionally have it. Even if Congress wants to act like a bunch of children, the executive branch has to be able to continue to operate and without the power of recess appointments, it could shut down the ability to do so.
It's pretty simple, really:
* You != an average Linux user.
* Loki Software proved the lack of market for Linux games 5 years ago when they shut down in 2002.
Chalk me up to another non-average Linux user. I've got a 3 foot wide bookshelf with boxes of commercial Linux games I've bought (most of Loki's offerings while they were still operational, stuff from LGP, NWN, iD's offerings, etc). I wonder how many of us it takes to make a market.
Loki had a lot more problems going on than the lack of a Linux market at the time. They tried to be too big, too quick and go for too many AAA titles at once. Between having to pay large upfront license costs to port games (often six figures or more) and royalties from every sale on top of that, they just didn't have a business plan that met their market. They would have been much better off as a porting house rather than a self publisher (much like Ryan Gordon/icculus does now).
On the other side of the scale, LGP is working on a lot of B grade games. Some of them are very good but they're very, very slow and methodical in their porting. I've beta tested games for them which took more than a year to release after I got the first beta. They need to get stuff out the door if they want to be serious. Throw in Tux Games charging $50 for the exact same box you can buy in the discount bin for $15 (ok, here's $18.82 at walmart and you might skew the numbers because people aren't buying from them so they "don't get counted" as a Linux sale. In fact, you can pick up NWN, Quake 4 and Doom 3 from Walmart for the price of one game from Tux Games with shipping.
IMO, a lot of the problem is simply the game industry not understanding the linux market properly. A market exists but you can't go at it Loki style or you're doomed to failure, not because of the market, but because the business plan doesn't add up. Software houses should look toward portability when they design a game and the cost of a single developer to handle the Linux port of it would be pretty cheap in the overall development of the game (I haven't exactly done a poll but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find Linux geek willing to work for less than the average game coder just for the privilege of being able to get paid to program a game for linux). Another part of the problem are the publishers who dictate to the game houses what they're going to release so even if they want to do a linux version, it may not be possible.
I've heard of it happening with older cordless phones (my sister claiming it happened to her back around 1997 at my aunt's house) and I found this on snopes to back it up. I suppose it isn't out of the realm of possibility that a corded touch tone phone with poor quality components could short in just the right way to sound the 911 tones if bumped to the floor as well. I don't know how a rotary phone could do it though.
Western NY has been on a steady decline for most of my life (I'm 30). I personally started to witness it with Kodak and Xerox in the late 80s/early 90s. It didn't have so much to do with how things are/were run at the federal level and almost entirely how things were done at the state/county/city level (as well as managerial mistakes made in the case of Kodak).
People have been steadily leaving the area for opportunities elsewhere for a good 15-20 years now... and a lot of the people leaving are 18-25. They go away to college and never come back or come here for college, look at the job market and leave immediately after. The result is that the future of the area is being washed away leaving the area with an aging population, a large number of disabled people (who lack the ability to leave), and the established welfare base. There is no entertainment unless you're into clubs/bars or high end artsy stuff... factor it all in and the social lives of a lot of 20-30 somethings suck putting even more pressure on them to want to leave.
So, their solution to the rising needs of government (to care for the elderly, disabled and welfare moms left behind) is to raise taxes... which in turn causes more existing businesses to want to move out and prevents people from starting new businesses here. The government has continued to grow and grow (and I believe it is now the largest employer in the area... the University of Rochester overtook Kodak as the largest non-governmental employer recently as Kodak sent even more jobs to other countries.) My property taxes (on a 2000 sq ft, 3 bedroom 1 bath house) were $500 in 1985 when we bought it and have now climbed to about $2200 even with my dad getting an extra ($600ish) discount for being disabled. That's in addition to sales tax going up from 7% to 8.25% (and there is a call for Rochester's county to go up another 0.25%). We're already one of the highest taxed areas in the country and they can't figure out why everyone is leaving when the solution is more taxation. We just had an average of a 15% increase in the assessed values of our houses last year. If the 15% more taxes the school received from that wasn't enough, the budget proposal (to be voted on next tuesday) has an additional 4.7% tax hike (4.3% if it is voted down but that means they will take away after school activities like sports, academic clubs, etc in an effort to bludgeon people into passing the full budget).
If it wasn't for the fact that I take care of my dad and I would be taking him away from all of his family (not to mention my sister just had his first grandkid), I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Short of splitting off into a new state (all of the state level politicians are from the downstate area and while they give lip service to those of us upstate, they don't really give a damn about us), getting rid the entitlement mentality (plus the politicians who foster it), and getting the taxation issues fixed, I'm not sure that there is any saving the area. Sooner or later, there isn't going to be anyone left to pay for the bloated government and their union employee salaries.
I'm not trying to make a generalization about every teacher in the country being overpaid, just saying that in my area, they certainly are paid well above every other job in town, especially when you factor in that their jobs are 100% secure. A fifth year teacher makes more money than any other town level employee (including the superintendents of the highway and water departments who have 20+ years experience each and one of whom is elected every 4 years). There are probably about 25 businesses in town to support that population of 7200 businesses precisely because taxation is so bad here businesses will develop in every town around us but ours. Our school has also gone from a NYS School of Excellence back in the 80s and 90s to one of the worst in the county now so you can't even say the ~100% budget increase in the last 10-15 years have been effective.
I support my dad and I on about $30k a year here. It isn't unusual for a teacher's family to make $80-100k working here (especially if two teachers are married to each other, which isn't uncommon). That's the main reason why I responded to you... You made it sound like $55k a year in NYS is horrible. Once you get away from the city and the Hudson River area, $55k is pretty damn good. A lot of upstate NY is leaving because the economy is so bad, you're happy to make $25-30k a year with a degree. Long gone are the golden days of getting a well paying lifetime job at Kodak or Xerox in the Rochester area (and Buffalo/Syracuse have suffered similar fates). The primary job sector which is growing is government and that can only last so long before the economy completely collapses under the weight of the public sector (especially with the state run pension plans that most government employees are a part of.) I can see the writing on the wall and I'm dying to get out myself but I've got too many family ties holding me here right now.
You act like NYS automatically implies New York City... There is an entire state outside of the city. In my town in western NY, the median HOUSEHOLD income is a little over $51k. Teachers in my district start at $32k and within 5 years, they're up over $40k. By 10, they're over $50k. Also factor in that they get another $10k in medical/dental benefits the day that they start, the school pays their pension for them (which can result in them retiring as early as 55 with full benefits and pay (with yearly cost of living adjustments for the rest of their life). A lot of teachers also coach a sport or academic team and that throws a little more money their way (and teachers will get first priority as a coach since it means a little less cost for the school compared to hiring an outsider).
There is an absolute glut of people who have a teaching certificate but can't get a job here but they stay and keep trying because of the ridiculous standard of living it provides compared to the jobs everyone else has. I have three friends myself who have their certificate and are already wrapping up their master's degree while they've been waiting for a non-substitute job to open up. When someone retires, dozens and dozens of people apply for that job. Nobody gets fired either. They hired a drunken drummer (he would routinely come late in wearing sunglasses on days where he had a gig the night before) to teach math back in 1992 while I was still in school. He's not only still there, he's now the head of the math department despite keeping a bottle of whiskey in his desk and routinely turning math class into a study hall since he doesn't feel well enough to teach.
Short of a handful of small business owners, the teachers are the only people in town who earn that kind of money in town. You're lucky if you can get a job paying $10/hr and some minor benefits here. The median household income is elevated by the number (the majority) of people who have to drive 25 miles to the nearest city to be lucky to earn what a teacher fresh out of college gets paid here. My town has 7200 people in it, about 2100 of them under 18, and a $29 million school budget that goes up 3-10% every year and nobody can do anything about it due to unfunded mandates and a teachers' union that cares more about the teachers than the students. $140,600 of next year's $29.4 million budget is slated for actually buying books. That is $14k per student that we're paying right now and that is actually a little deflated since not all of those 2100 kids are old enough to be in school.
Since you seem to imply the 36 co-sponsors are Republicans,
Rick Boucher D-VA (and Slashdot darling), GK Butterfield D-NC, Lois Capps D-CA, Dianna DeGette D-CO, John Dingell D-MI, Michael Doyle D-PA, Eliot Engel D-NY, Anna Eshoo D-CA, Sam Farr D-CA, Charlie Gonzales D-TX, Bart Gordon D-TN, Gene Green D-TX, Darlene Hooley D-OR, Jay Inslee D-WA, Ed Markey D-MA, Jim Matheson D-UT, Jerry McNerney D-CA, David Price D-NC, Bobby Rush D-IL, Janice Schakowsky D-IL, Hilda Solis D-CA, Bart Stupak D-MI, Anthony Weiner D-NY
23 of 36 co-sponsors are Democrats but it is a Republican bill?
Oh, and the kicker? Author: Ed Towns D-NY
But it is a Republican bill.
You obviously looked up the bill... why lie about the sponsor and co-sponsors? Did you just assume that they were Republicans since the Democrats can do no wrong and the Republicans are evil? The fact that you were modded up here as informative is indicative of the general group think that permeates Slashdot regarding politics. Come on people, is it so hard to fact check this stuff rather than blindly accept what someone else tells you?
There have been over 10 Zeldas, five MarioRPG games and three WarioWare games before the Wii even launched, oh, and Mario, MetroidPrime and SmashBros aren't exactly new either.
I haven't owned a console since the SNES... and even then, I only had about 6 games for it. Prior to getting a Wii in November, I went about 14 years without playing a Zelda and haven't played a Super Mario game since Super Mario World. I've still only played the original Metroid. I've never played a Smash Bros or Wario game. They're all new to me.
I stopped playing my SNES and started gaming exclusively on my computer. On occasion, I'd end up at someone's house who had a Playstation, N64 or whatever and I might play a little bit, but I had lost interest in console gaming in favor of the strengths offered by PC gaming. PC games offered more depth, complexity, strategy, etc. I played the NHL 9x series on the PC instead of a console as well because the console stuff just looked too cheezy and was lacking a lot of the stuff the PC version had.
A few years ago, I got addicted to EverQuest and wasted most of three years on it. I quit a year ago this week because I realized it had taken over my life, was causing me to constantly be stressed out, etc. I didn't want to stop gaming entirely but I wanted to game on my terms and when I had free time. I use Linux and since the demise of Loki, there haven't really been a lot of options to feed my gamer side. I certainly didn't want to build a new rig just for gaming here and there. Nintendo stepped in and offered me a $250 console with games that I can play on my terms. Not only that, they had a new controller scheme that lets my paralyzed father (can't use his left arm and hand) play a lot of games. Just this past Saturday, I went over to my mom's house and she called me just before I left to tell me to make sure I brought my Wii. My parents haven't played video games since Pacman but they both get excited over something as simple as bowling on Wii Sports. Everyone else who stops in at my mom's house who sees the Wii wants to play with it.
The games you listed may very well be sequel after sequel... but the Wii is opening the market to people who don't video game to begin with and brining people like me back to the console market who've been absent for years and years. The Xbox and PS fanboys can keep their consoles and the bragging rights to how big their processor is. Neither system appeals to me. I've done my hardcore gaming (60-80 hours a week for 3 years as a guild and raid leader in EQ is more hardcore than most console gamers could ever want to be). I want something that is just fun, doesn't stress me out and that I can engage with my friends and family in real life with. That said, I still beat Twilight Princess in two long sessions of play but it was refreshing to play a Zelda in a whole new way (my last Zelda being A Link to the Past). Three months later, I'm still having fun with Madden 07 as well. The new controller scheme completely revived that game for me since last playing it on the PC in the last 90s.
I dont think lot of people would be allow to praise the 911 terrorists in US, encourage killing americans and soldiers, spitting of the victims of 911.
It isn't exactly the most popular sentiment but there are plenty of people in the US who express exactly those ideas. The solution isn't to shut them up because that just makes it look like their idea of the "truth" is being hidden from the public. The solution is to debate them and thoroughly debunk them to prove them for the fools they are. Check out Ward Churchill and Amiri Baraka for two prominent examples.
Compare the number of people participating in the pro-gay marriage demonstrations to those participating in the anti-gay marriage protests. According to your logic, it would mean 1000 people are for gay marriage for every person against it. However, I can't think of a single state offhand that has offered a referendum on gay marriage and had the people specifically vote to allow gay marriage. There is this concept known as the "silent majority" that aren't very vocal but hold strong opinions (usually for the status quo) about things. They'll turn out to vote but they won't turn out to a protest for any particular cause that they believe in.
Also, can you name any war that more than a handful of kooks protested to go to? Going to war is a very serious and ugly thing and most people need to be lead to war. That's why we elect leaders rather than having someone just stick their finger in the wind of every issue to see where it blows. The right thing isn't always the popular thing.
Indeed, it often is. Science in the real world often has to proceed from much less certainty than you're probably familiar with as a mechanic.
I'm not a mechanic, I just play one for family when they need something fixed. I went to college for engineering (unfortunately, I didn't get to finish due to my father having a stroke). It is a nice way to try to ad hominem me though, as though a mere mechanic would be too dumb to understand anything about science. BTW, my hypothetical estimate of the force of gravity was the same margin of error and we know anyone who was 12.5% off in each direction on measuring the force of gravity. If you want to claim we know how global warming works, like we know how gravity works, a margin of error that large is unacceptable. If someone gave that kind of margin of error for gravity in a high school physics class, they'd fail.
That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? You're much more interested in shooting your mouth off than correcting your ignorance.
Or maybe I have more important things to do with my life than read endless report after endless report regarding a field I'm not an expert in nor intend to be an expert in. I asked you for a very specific bit of data which would conclusively prove that you are right and you keep avoiding giving it to me. Its like me asking you for a needle and instead of handing it to me, you bury it in a haystack. I'll repeat my question again since you are so well versed in climatology and the IPCC reports so you would undoubtedly know exactly where that information is: give me a link to the model, formula and data sets which were run and accurately showed the climate outcome of each of the next 10 years in the future without tweaking the model as it ran to correct it when it was wrong. I'm the one saying "I don't know" and if you have that kind of conclusive data, you can immediately end the debate, I will surrender to your supreme knowledge and I will fight the fight on your behalf. If you can't, then you're talking out your ass. Science is about validating theories and there is no Law of Anthropogenic Global Warming until you can show it.
No, I mean like publishing research in peer-reviewed journals. I've asked you several times, but let me repeat - what research have GW deniers published in peer-reviewed journals? Making a movie isn't the debate. Writing a book isn't the debate.
Making the movie is an appeal to emotion/argumentum ad terrorum. Its a deliberate attempt to politicize the issue by scaring Joe Sixpack into doing something about it. As for the peer-reviewed journals, when was the last time you saw Microsoft publish a study in favor of Linux? Peer review isn't the holy grail of anything, validity and verification of the data is.
That's not what you asked for. You've been asking for models that predict the next ten years, not the past ten years. Somebody stop those goalposts!
No goalposts moving at all.. a willful attempt by you to ignore what I'm saying. Flash back to 1997. Show me the untweaked model that was run in 1997 which accurately predicted the climate of 1997, 1998, 1999... 2006. You see, the 1997 model was predicting the future in 1997. We are now using its predictions of the (then) future to compare them to the (now) known past. I don't care about a model run in 2007 that was tweaked to fit the data from 1997, 1998... 2006 in it.
I don't have a conclusion here... I think there are idiots on both sides and I'm waiting for verifiable proof to be shown from either side.
Weren't you saying something about ad hominem attacks? Does calling someone an "idiot", in your opinion, constitute an "ad hominem attack?"
Can you name any subject that doesn't have at least one idiot on both sides? I didn't say everyone on both sides were idiots, but I'm 66-90% sure that there is at least 1 (+/- a 25% margin of error) on each side of any subject. Thus, just because th
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22 years and I've never had a chimney fire. I brush the chimney monthly to prevent creosote buildup.
The post office has to use more fuel to carry all the extra weight in their vehicles.
The post office has to do the same route every day whether they deliver you one piece of mail or 10. Even if they don't have mail for you, they have mail for your neighbors so they have to travel down your road anyway. Driving the route is the biggest contributor of fuel expenses, junk mail just makes it slightly more inefficient. I normally get about 22 mpg on my truck. Towing a trailer around with 1000 pounds of weight in it makes me get about 21 mpg even on hilly routes.
I have to get it from the mail box
Do you check your mail daily? Does carrying a couple ounces of mail to your dwelling cause you so much wear and fuel that you can measure it?
The DMA companies didn't buy my shredder for me, they don't spend 15 minutes shredding junk every week, and they don't subsidize the cost of fuel for the garbage truck that stops at every house to pick up what most likely amounts to tons of extra garbage weight a year.
I don't own a shredder. I heat my house with wood (hey, my heat is carbon neutral and cheaper than oil/coal/gas/electric though it is offset by manual labor) and I save my junk mail to use as starter paper to get the kindling going. It saves me from having to buy paper or starter fluid to get my fires going. Also, even with an extended amount of time, good luck putting my mail back together to get sensitive info when it has all turned to a mishmash of ashes in the bottom of my wood stove. As for my garbage, again, it is the same as the post office. The majority of the fuel is spent just driving to my house. The weight of junk mail is a pittance compared to that. I throw away an average of 3 bags of garbage a week. If I threw away my junk mail, it would be a small fraction of that.
They also don't care if some meth head stops by my mailbox, steals my junk mail, and uses one of the dozens of free credit card offers to steal my identity and start me down the road of a ruined credit rating.
Opt out of prescreened credit offers
Opt out of all DMA members mailing lists
Opt out of all DMA members phone calling lists
Join the federal do no call list
These programs really work... smart DMA people don't want to sell to people who don't like them. It wastes their time and resources to annoy you. Since joining just the federal do not call list, my telemarketing has dropped to near zero (only exceptions being companies I've done business with, politicians and political surveys (yeah, I'm one of those people who gets 1-2 survey calls a month)).
Spam is much, much more annoying to me than junk mail is. Telemarketing probably ranks higher than spam though since it is an immediate interruption in what I'm doing so someone can try to pitch something at me. Email I read at my leisure. It takes me a couple seconds to toss out my junk mail once a day since the envelopes are pretty obvious. I spend much more time making sure spamassassin is correctly classifying spam/ham, setting up whitelists and blacklists, etc than I do dealing with junk mail. Overaggressive filters means I could lose important emails if I don't scan through things carefully. I've never tossed away valid mail (though sometimes I will open a strange looking mail to make sure isn't something important).
At the end of the day, I'm at least wasting the junk mailers money if they send me crap to my mailbox. Even with a bulk rate, they're limited to how much they can send out by the expense of printing it and putting a stamp on it. Spammers incur almost no cost to send out an unlimited amount of garbage. I get 100 spams a day averaging at least 30 megs a month. I have to spend time making sure my network doesn't turn into a bots, cleaning out friends machines which were turned into bots, etc.
Here in NY, gas tax is somewhere around 63 cents per gallon. I drive about 9000 miles a year at 22 mpg. So I buy 409 gallons, paying $258 in fuel taxes. I also paid $1166 in (real) property taxes to my town and county (not counting a separate school tax). Not all of that $1166 goes to road maintenance, but some does. Same with the 8% sales tax that I pay between the county and state.
Anyway, the point being that my $71 in registration fees (which is higher than your average person will pay) doesn't even cover road construction... The vast majority of road money in NY comes from fuel taxes, property taxes and state/federal aid. A good chunk of registration money just goes into operating costs of the DMV.
My dad used to work for the town's highway department. It costs about $100,000 to pave 1 mile of road. There are 93 miles of road in my town which would have a cost of $9,300,000 just to pave. There are about 5100 people old enough to drive. Over the life of the road, each driver would have to pay $1824 to pay for their construction. Roads last about 20 years (give or take depending on how heavily they are used, what types of vehicles are on them, etc). That means each person would have to pay $91 a year in registration fees just to create the roads in the first place. The maximum yearly fee for a passenger vehicle is $56 and for a commercial vehicle its $104. Also note that pickups are generally registered as commercial vehicles which have a lower registration fee than passenger vehicles (my truck at MGVW 4400 pounds is $26 vs $32.25 for a passenger plate).
Now... that is just for the initial paving of the road. It doesn't take into account the cost of resurfacing, sealing, fixing potholes, plowing and sanding, construction of bridges, sluice and drainage, maintenance of shoulders, picking up carcasses and other debris such as fallen trees, signs, lighting, etc. Highway maintenance is the single largest expense coming out of the town budget (the school being funded through its own budget and water/sewer being funded from direct billing like a utility. Fire/EMS is the second most expensive (cheaper because the firemen are volunteers instead of being paid). Police are provided by the county via county taxes).
If you think vehicle registration alone (at least in NY) pays for construction and upkeep of roads, you are very, very sorely mistaken. Take out of my $26 the cost to manufacture plates (lets say $3), the 15 minutes I spent with a DMV employee (easilly over $30/hr by the time you factor in wages, employer tax contributions, pension and benefits), and paperwork and computer/network maintenance ($1) and we're left with about $11.50 of my truck registration going to my town's needing over $200 per person to construct and maintain roads. Throw in my trailer and camper ($17.50 each) and my ATV ($10) and we're still only ending up with me giving them a total of $71 before processing costs... and a lot (most?) people don't have anything more than their vehicle to register. The remainder is made up between a combination of fuel taxes, property taxes, general sales taxes, toll money collected by the state, federal highway monies, etc.
From the Fourth Amendment "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
You have the right to not testify against yourself. However, if you go down to the police station and brag that you just committed a crime, your words will be admissible in court against you. Similarly, if you keep a ledger of all the people you shake down, that ledger can be used as evidence that you committed extortion. Also note that you only have the right to not testify against yourself in a criminal case. If you're involved in a civil case and refuse to present evidence that the judge ordered for discovery, expect to go to jail for contempt of court.
What is Unconstitutional is if the police refuse to let you have a lawyer after you've requested one, forcing you to sign a confession you didn't make, forcing you to take the stand against yourself in a criminal case (though if you opt to take the stand to defend yourself, you open yourself to cross examination and can be compelled to testify against yourself which is why many defendants will opt to not take the stand (for example, Scooter Libby)).
and you can repair your planes, install your faucets and fix your power supply with Delta Power Tools
Are 10 rapes worse than 1 murder? A rape is something the victim will be scarred with the rest of their life. Sure, they're alive but their relationships (present and future) are certain to suffer, they'll have a hard time trusting people, they might live the rest of their life holed up wondering who is going to get them next. Identity theft may not physically violate you but it can ruin the chances of you buying a house, financing an addition to your home for a new child your wife is already pregnant with, starting a business or even getting your next job... It can haunt you for years and some things may haunt you for the rest of your life (like losing your shot at your dream home). This guy didn't screw up just one life and deny their family members and friends something, this guy screwed up hundreds of lives and the families of those people as well. If you're going to get the same punishment whether or not you commit 1 crime or 100 of the same crimes, what is to stop you from doing it over and over again? If that serial rapist only gets 4 years for the first rape, were the other 9 victims less victimized so they don't count? If he rapes one, goes to jail for 4 years, gets out and rapes another, does he get off scott free since he already served time for raping someone in the past?
This guy messed up the credit of hundreds of people, defrauded thousands of people, cost thousands, if not millions, of dollars worth of damage and expenses to various computers, servers and networks out there. He's hardly a guy who has the potential to get 65 years for a speeding ticket.
Lets say this guy committed 100 counts each of identity theft, money laundering, mail fraud, and wire fraud. That's at least 100 lives he's messed up. 100 people who will have credit problems which take dozens of hours and possibly years to repair. A single murder may be worth, oh, 10 years... but this isn't a single case of identity theft, he is a serial identity stealer so if you want to compare his sentence to a murderer, compare him to a serial killer.
Nobody would seriously say someone who sent 1 spam mail should get 65 years in prison. A day of community service maybe, but not 65 years. If he sent one million spams, he should get one million days of community service. Actually, lets be nice and give him a bulk discount, we'll give him 1 hour for every spam. That's 41667 days or a little over 114 years of community service. This guy knew exactly what he was doing and he deliberately defrauded thousands of people, hijacked other people's computers, ruined people's credit, etc. The entire penal system is about punishing people for harming society and this guy went out of his way, and far beyond just being a rude jerk, to treat other people like crap.
So, the entire census is conducted at exactly the same second? If you take a full day, you're going to have people you already counted who died in that period, people you already counted who have since given birth in that period, etc. Factor in that most censuses normally take weeks and not only do you have births and deaths but you have people who have moved around, you have estimates (which can be completely bogus) of people that you didn't count (such as homeless people), etc. I don't think you can get a census precise to a single person in a sample any bigger than a small or medium sized business. Really, the best you can do is an educated guess and it seems a little silly to not imply any room for error in the guess.
Side X says hyperbole A is true and the public finds that it was false, the public turns against side X. Side Y also says that hyperbole B is true and the public finds out that it was false, the public turns against side Y. The public now disbelieves everything side X says as well as everything side Y says, becoming completely cynical to the whole subject and tuning everyone out. How many people actually believe politicians will do what they say they will? Sure, I may vote for someone because what he said was better than his opponent said but in reality, I know that I'll be lucky if he follows through with 10% of his promises. Sure, you'll still have ardent supporters of X and ardent supporters of Y but the majority of people will be pretty apathetic. That's precisely why most politicians won't rail hard in one direction or the other but will try to play the middle. Go hard left and the middle goes (/cough /bullshit). Go hard right and the middle goes (/cough /bullshit). A third party candidate runs and says they aren't like X or Y and almost EVERYONE goes (/cough /bullshit).
Ultimately, people will go with what least defies their sensibilities. If it seems like volcanoes emit more GHGs than humans, they'll go for that. If it seems like the weather has been off for the last couple years compared to what they remember (even if it is within the normal range of variation), they'll go with that. If you tell people the sea levels will rise by 20 feet over the next 100 years (which they expect to mean 2.4 inches a year), they'll think you're fear-mongering and have no credit when it goes up 1 inch in the next 20 years. If you tell people that humans can have absolutely no affect on the climate, they'll point out that pollution has obvious visible effects (because, of course, a few cigarette butts on road by a stop light means that the environment has changed while they don't understand that environmental change and climate change are totally different beasts) and believe you're just protecting the interests of big business and have no credit.
If greenies were as smart as they think they are, they wouldn't be going for the hyperbole... instead, they would say things like
* You should switch to compact fluorescent because it will save you money and the headaches of having to change bulbs.
* You should better insulate your homes so that they leak less heating/cooling because it will save you money.
* Instead of buying a new car every 2-4 years. you should keep the vehicle you have because even if a new car is 10% more efficient (number pulled out of my ass), it would take years longer to make up for the pollution caused by the construction of a new vehicle. Bonus: you'll reduce your debt spending and have more money for your family.
* Use a clothes line whenever possible to dry your laundry. Sure, it is slightly more inconvenient, but you'll save money (it costs about 50 cents for me to dry a load of clothes here).
* Instead of throwing away used but functional durable goods (clothes, computers, vehicles, appliances, whatever), donate them to goodwill or the salvation army. You'll get a tax write off and help other people. Also, buy from these places and you can get great deals, even on brand name/designer products, saving money.
What anti-greeny is going to argue with that stuff? It is all common sense, all of it supports the cause, people see immediate personal benefits and they will think "you know, they (the greenies) are right."
"The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session."
The President has ALWAYS had the power to make recess appointments (George Washington made the first one in 1795). It is a vital power which can be absolutely critical in a situation like a time of war where the Secretary of Defense dies and Congress is out of session. It is also important if you have a Senate which interprets "advice and consent" to mean "we won't allow a vote on a President's nominees unless they are the nominee we choose" which eliminates the President's power to pick his appointments and cedes that power to a body that doesn't Constitutionally have it. Even if Congress wants to act like a bunch of children, the executive branch has to be able to continue to operate and without the power of recess appointments, it could shut down the ability to do so.
Loki had a lot more problems going on than the lack of a Linux market at the time. They tried to be too big, too quick and go for too many AAA titles at once. Between having to pay large upfront license costs to port games (often six figures or more) and royalties from every sale on top of that, they just didn't have a business plan that met their market. They would have been much better off as a porting house rather than a self publisher (much like Ryan Gordon/icculus does now).
On the other side of the scale, LGP is working on a lot of B grade games. Some of them are very good but they're very, very slow and methodical in their porting. I've beta tested games for them which took more than a year to release after I got the first beta. They need to get stuff out the door if they want to be serious. Throw in Tux Games charging $50 for the exact same box you can buy in the discount bin for $15 (ok, here's $18.82 at walmart and you might skew the numbers because people aren't buying from them so they "don't get counted" as a Linux sale. In fact, you can pick up NWN, Quake 4 and Doom 3 from Walmart for the price of one game from Tux Games with shipping.
IMO, a lot of the problem is simply the game industry not understanding the linux market properly. A market exists but you can't go at it Loki style or you're doomed to failure, not because of the market, but because the business plan doesn't add up. Software houses should look toward portability when they design a game and the cost of a single developer to handle the Linux port of it would be pretty cheap in the overall development of the game (I haven't exactly done a poll but I wouldn't be surprised if you could find Linux geek willing to work for less than the average game coder just for the privilege of being able to get paid to program a game for linux). Another part of the problem are the publishers who dictate to the game houses what they're going to release so even if they want to do a linux version, it may not be possible.
I've heard of it happening with older cordless phones (my sister claiming it happened to her back around 1997 at my aunt's house) and I found this on snopes to back it up. I suppose it isn't out of the realm of possibility that a corded touch tone phone with poor quality components could short in just the right way to sound the 911 tones if bumped to the floor as well. I don't know how a rotary phone could do it though.
Western NY has been on a steady decline for most of my life (I'm 30). I personally started to witness it with Kodak and Xerox in the late 80s/early 90s. It didn't have so much to do with how things are/were run at the federal level and almost entirely how things were done at the state/county/city level (as well as managerial mistakes made in the case of Kodak).
People have been steadily leaving the area for opportunities elsewhere for a good 15-20 years now... and a lot of the people leaving are 18-25. They go away to college and never come back or come here for college, look at the job market and leave immediately after. The result is that the future of the area is being washed away leaving the area with an aging population, a large number of disabled people (who lack the ability to leave), and the established welfare base. There is no entertainment unless you're into clubs/bars or high end artsy stuff... factor it all in and the social lives of a lot of 20-30 somethings suck putting even more pressure on them to want to leave.
So, their solution to the rising needs of government (to care for the elderly, disabled and welfare moms left behind) is to raise taxes... which in turn causes more existing businesses to want to move out and prevents people from starting new businesses here. The government has continued to grow and grow (and I believe it is now the largest employer in the area... the University of Rochester overtook Kodak as the largest non-governmental employer recently as Kodak sent even more jobs to other countries.) My property taxes (on a 2000 sq ft, 3 bedroom 1 bath house) were $500 in 1985 when we bought it and have now climbed to about $2200 even with my dad getting an extra ($600ish) discount for being disabled. That's in addition to sales tax going up from 7% to 8.25% (and there is a call for Rochester's county to go up another 0.25%). We're already one of the highest taxed areas in the country and they can't figure out why everyone is leaving when the solution is more taxation. We just had an average of a 15% increase in the assessed values of our houses last year. If the 15% more taxes the school received from that wasn't enough, the budget proposal (to be voted on next tuesday) has an additional 4.7% tax hike (4.3% if it is voted down but that means they will take away after school activities like sports, academic clubs, etc in an effort to bludgeon people into passing the full budget).
If it wasn't for the fact that I take care of my dad and I would be taking him away from all of his family (not to mention my sister just had his first grandkid), I'd be gone in a heartbeat. Short of splitting off into a new state (all of the state level politicians are from the downstate area and while they give lip service to those of us upstate, they don't really give a damn about us), getting rid the entitlement mentality (plus the politicians who foster it), and getting the taxation issues fixed, I'm not sure that there is any saving the area. Sooner or later, there isn't going to be anyone left to pay for the bloated government and their union employee salaries.
I support my dad and I on about $30k a year here. It isn't unusual for a teacher's family to make $80-100k working here (especially if two teachers are married to each other, which isn't uncommon). That's the main reason why I responded to you... You made it sound like $55k a year in NYS is horrible. Once you get away from the city and the Hudson River area, $55k is pretty damn good. A lot of upstate NY is leaving because the economy is so bad, you're happy to make $25-30k a year with a degree. Long gone are the golden days of getting a well paying lifetime job at Kodak or Xerox in the Rochester area (and Buffalo/Syracuse have suffered similar fates). The primary job sector which is growing is government and that can only last so long before the economy completely collapses under the weight of the public sector (especially with the state run pension plans that most government employees are a part of.) I can see the writing on the wall and I'm dying to get out myself but I've got too many family ties holding me here right now.
There is an absolute glut of people who have a teaching certificate but can't get a job here but they stay and keep trying because of the ridiculous standard of living it provides compared to the jobs everyone else has. I have three friends myself who have their certificate and are already wrapping up their master's degree while they've been waiting for a non-substitute job to open up. When someone retires, dozens and dozens of people apply for that job. Nobody gets fired either. They hired a drunken drummer (he would routinely come late in wearing sunglasses on days where he had a gig the night before) to teach math back in 1992 while I was still in school. He's not only still there, he's now the head of the math department despite keeping a bottle of whiskey in his desk and routinely turning math class into a study hall since he doesn't feel well enough to teach.
Short of a handful of small business owners, the teachers are the only people in town who earn that kind of money in town. You're lucky if you can get a job paying $10/hr and some minor benefits here. The median household income is elevated by the number (the majority) of people who have to drive 25 miles to the nearest city to be lucky to earn what a teacher fresh out of college gets paid here. My town has 7200 people in it, about 2100 of them under 18, and a $29 million school budget that goes up 3-10% every year and nobody can do anything about it due to unfunded mandates and a teachers' union that cares more about the teachers than the students. $140,600 of next year's $29.4 million budget is slated for actually buying books. That is $14k per student that we're paying right now and that is actually a little deflated since not all of those 2100 kids are old enough to be in school.
Rick Boucher D-VA (and Slashdot darling), GK Butterfield D-NC, Lois Capps D-CA, Dianna DeGette D-CO, John Dingell D-MI, Michael Doyle D-PA, Eliot Engel D-NY, Anna Eshoo D-CA, Sam Farr D-CA, Charlie Gonzales D-TX, Bart Gordon D-TN, Gene Green D-TX, Darlene Hooley D-OR, Jay Inslee D-WA, Ed Markey D-MA, Jim Matheson D-UT, Jerry McNerney D-CA, David Price D-NC, Bobby Rush D-IL, Janice Schakowsky D-IL, Hilda Solis D-CA, Bart Stupak D-MI, Anthony Weiner D-NY
23 of 36 co-sponsors are Democrats but it is a Republican bill?
Oh, and the kicker? Author: Ed Towns D-NY
But it is a Republican bill.
You obviously looked up the bill... why lie about the sponsor and co-sponsors? Did you just assume that they were Republicans since the Democrats can do no wrong and the Republicans are evil? The fact that you were modded up here as informative is indicative of the general group think that permeates Slashdot regarding politics. Come on people, is it so hard to fact check this stuff rather than blindly accept what someone else tells you?
I was just going to recommend the Redirect Remover extension for Firefox but it seems to have disappeared from the public site and into the sandbox.
I haven't owned a console since the SNES... and even then, I only had about 6 games for it. Prior to getting a Wii in November, I went about 14 years without playing a Zelda and haven't played a Super Mario game since Super Mario World. I've still only played the original Metroid. I've never played a Smash Bros or Wario game. They're all new to me.
I stopped playing my SNES and started gaming exclusively on my computer. On occasion, I'd end up at someone's house who had a Playstation, N64 or whatever and I might play a little bit, but I had lost interest in console gaming in favor of the strengths offered by PC gaming. PC games offered more depth, complexity, strategy, etc. I played the NHL 9x series on the PC instead of a console as well because the console stuff just looked too cheezy and was lacking a lot of the stuff the PC version had.
A few years ago, I got addicted to EverQuest and wasted most of three years on it. I quit a year ago this week because I realized it had taken over my life, was causing me to constantly be stressed out, etc. I didn't want to stop gaming entirely but I wanted to game on my terms and when I had free time. I use Linux and since the demise of Loki, there haven't really been a lot of options to feed my gamer side. I certainly didn't want to build a new rig just for gaming here and there. Nintendo stepped in and offered me a $250 console with games that I can play on my terms. Not only that, they had a new controller scheme that lets my paralyzed father (can't use his left arm and hand) play a lot of games. Just this past Saturday, I went over to my mom's house and she called me just before I left to tell me to make sure I brought my Wii. My parents haven't played video games since Pacman but they both get excited over something as simple as bowling on Wii Sports. Everyone else who stops in at my mom's house who sees the Wii wants to play with it.
The games you listed may very well be sequel after sequel... but the Wii is opening the market to people who don't video game to begin with and brining people like me back to the console market who've been absent for years and years. The Xbox and PS fanboys can keep their consoles and the bragging rights to how big their processor is. Neither system appeals to me. I've done my hardcore gaming (60-80 hours a week for 3 years as a guild and raid leader in EQ is more hardcore than most console gamers could ever want to be). I want something that is just fun, doesn't stress me out and that I can engage with my friends and family in real life with. That said, I still beat Twilight Princess in two long sessions of play but it was refreshing to play a Zelda in a whole new way (my last Zelda being A Link to the Past). Three months later, I'm still having fun with Madden 07 as well. The new controller scheme completely revived that game for me since last playing it on the PC in the last 90s.
It isn't exactly the most popular sentiment but there are plenty of people in the US who express exactly those ideas. The solution isn't to shut them up because that just makes it look like their idea of the "truth" is being hidden from the public. The solution is to debate them and thoroughly debunk them to prove them for the fools they are. Check out Ward Churchill and Amiri Baraka for two prominent examples.
Also, can you name any war that more than a handful of kooks protested to go to? Going to war is a very serious and ugly thing and most people need to be lead to war. That's why we elect leaders rather than having someone just stick their finger in the wind of every issue to see where it blows. The right thing isn't always the popular thing.
I'm not a mechanic, I just play one for family when they need something fixed. I went to college for engineering (unfortunately, I didn't get to finish due to my father having a stroke). It is a nice way to try to ad hominem me though, as though a mere mechanic would be too dumb to understand anything about science. BTW, my hypothetical estimate of the force of gravity was the same margin of error and we know anyone who was 12.5% off in each direction on measuring the force of gravity. If you want to claim we know how global warming works, like we know how gravity works, a margin of error that large is unacceptable. If someone gave that kind of margin of error for gravity in a high school physics class, they'd fail.
That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? You're much more interested in shooting your mouth off than correcting your ignorance.
Or maybe I have more important things to do with my life than read endless report after endless report regarding a field I'm not an expert in nor intend to be an expert in. I asked you for a very specific bit of data which would conclusively prove that you are right and you keep avoiding giving it to me. Its like me asking you for a needle and instead of handing it to me, you bury it in a haystack. I'll repeat my question again since you are so well versed in climatology and the IPCC reports so you would undoubtedly know exactly where that information is: give me a link to the model, formula and data sets which were run and accurately showed the climate outcome of each of the next 10 years in the future without tweaking the model as it ran to correct it when it was wrong. I'm the one saying "I don't know" and if you have that kind of conclusive data, you can immediately end the debate, I will surrender to your supreme knowledge and I will fight the fight on your behalf. If you can't, then you're talking out your ass. Science is about validating theories and there is no Law of Anthropogenic Global Warming until you can show it.
No, I mean like publishing research in peer-reviewed journals. I've asked you several times, but let me repeat - what research have GW deniers published in peer-reviewed journals? Making a movie isn't the debate. Writing a book isn't the debate.
Making the movie is an appeal to emotion/argumentum ad terrorum. Its a deliberate attempt to politicize the issue by scaring Joe Sixpack into doing something about it. As for the peer-reviewed journals, when was the last time you saw Microsoft publish a study in favor of Linux? Peer review isn't the holy grail of anything, validity and verification of the data is.
That's not what you asked for. You've been asking for models that predict the next ten years, not the past ten years. Somebody stop those goalposts!
No goalposts moving at all.. a willful attempt by you to ignore what I'm saying. Flash back to 1997. Show me the untweaked model that was run in 1997 which accurately predicted the climate of 1997, 1998, 1999 ... 2006. You see, the 1997 model was predicting the future in 1997. We are now using its predictions of the (then) future to compare them to the (now) known past. I don't care about a model run in 2007 that was tweaked to fit the data from 1997, 1998 ... 2006 in it.
I don't have a conclusion here... I think there are idiots on both sides and I'm waiting for verifiable proof to be shown from either side.
Weren't you saying something about ad hominem attacks? Does calling someone an "idiot", in your opinion, constitute an "ad hominem attack?"
Can you name any subject that doesn't have at least one idiot on both sides? I didn't say everyone on both sides were idiots, but I'm 66-90% sure that there is at least 1 (+/- a 25% margin of error) on each side of any subject. Thus, just because th