Shit happens. It didn't make sense that Italy would get bogged down in backwards Ethiopia in WW2, that the English would lose a few battles to Zulus with spears, or that with our technology we can't conquer Iraq. Weirder things have happened.
Conquer is easy, hold is harder. If you cared less about PR and fully utilized your war machine you'd have won... but iraq would be a radioactive smoldering ruin and the other nations might align against you. You didn't defeat them completely enough for them to concede emotionally like Japan and Germany did and did not go out of your way to maintain law and order afterwards. You have vague goals, murky direction and poor leadership. Even with star trek level technology your current choice of leaders would have found a way to lose.
There's little reason to believe that our computer controlled cars will be capable of crashing in 50 years, much less so by the time we can build an interstellar craft capable of carrying crew.
Umm... our current systems aren't bug free and the occurance of bugs are pretty much uniform through out the history of computing. IT's a bit naive to think computer controlled cars will be crash proof.
We only have to look at the comparison between Vertabrates and Invertabrates to see how evolution favors certain characteristics.
Animals tend to have heads, at the leading end of the body. This head contains sensory organs, often eyes, but not limited to them. Antennae/trunks/feelers are also common, as well as ears (though ears may be elsewhere as well).
Also the head tends to contain a mouth-like orgain for feeding/drinking that often includes teeth or other specialized feeding aparatus. There is also a digestive tract throughout the body and abdomen, leading to a rectum or exit hole. There is also a kind of circulation system to move the necessities of life through the body.
Appendages such as arms or legs are common, as well as wings. They tend to have claws or appendages at the ends for grasping or manipulation.
There may be some things unique to intelligent species, such as a large brain organ, or nimble appendages.
But, then again, their life forms may be so much different as to be unimaginable. Nucular powered instead of solar/chemical powered? Non-Carbon based? Who knows.
Evolution can be confusing to some but you just rattled off traits that a common ancestor of mammals, amphibians, fish etc.. had. notable other successful animals lack these or have them in a weird analogue. They are useful but by not means requisite and who know what might happen if the universe did it all over again. It's like a game of chess. Any particular point in a valid game will seem logical at how it arrived but had eachplayer done things slightly differently it all might be very different.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. If the US demographically looked a LOT more like Cananda I'd think that a single-payer system would be more likely to work. US Cities have HUGE numbers of non-productive or only marginally-productive citizens that would be a large net-tax on health care.
Under a single-payer system the people paying for health care now would pay just as much for it if not more. But, they'd have to wait in line behind others who pay not nearly as much. The only ones who benefit are the ones who aren't paying for it now.
I think that most people would have sympathy for people who are of the same walk of life but just temporarily out of a job. The problem is the many more people who just aren't of the same walk of life - they live marginally and people resent paying a lot of money to care for them, as they don't feel like it will ever be reciprocated.
Statistic information about who gets treatment actually suggest the opposite. The biggest users of the system here are the middle and upper middle class. The proper upper class would have fared the same in either system (the really rich just head south for treatment). Those who have marginal income but still utilize the system still indirectly benefit the main payer (the middle class). Health costs is the leading cause of bankruptcy and main contributer to poverty and crime follows poverty and the largest target of crime is the middle class. A round about argument but if you investigate the number (CA crime rates vs US crime rates) you'll notice there are a great deal less crimes of desperation here.
Then we agree. Both systems are foobar just that there are not that many "objective" people that can admit it. I have lived 10 years in the US, and about near triple that in in Canadian system and can honestly say they BOTH have serious problems. I am going to get the revenge of the mod down but what the heck..
The US system is systemically fucked and is beyond repair short of boot fucking all the insurance companies and going back to square one. The Canadian system is stressed by the number of aging boomer's and will be fixed when they die. It still works reasonably well. Also our system is essentially a public system with a public payer. It's not perfect in Canada but it's reasonable given the situation.
I'm not obese...I'm not even mildly overweight, and I exercise regularly. Why should I have to pay extra for health care because other people live unhealthy lifestyles?
Because you are a part of that society. If you don't like it move. Just not to Canada, we already have a whole province of sniveling whiners.
In Canada the gov pays 1/2 as much on our behalf for a longer life expectancy. There are wait list for surgeries but is more demographic problem then any real problem with the system. Any pay as you go system with a large number of upcoming takes and a smaller pool of givers is going to have some of these problems. But they are ironed out with time and a stable demographic spread. Considering your private system takes twice as much funds from the government per person then our public system, and a non-trivial portion of your population is uninsured or under insured I'd be careful about pointing fingers.
Inefficiency rarely exceeds profit margins in similar industries. See US Health care per person government expenditure vs Canadian per person expenditure. You spend double to achieve a worse over all result because someone has to make their 66%-200%.
If Penrose turns out to be right (The Emperor's New Mind) and quantum-like operations are needed to truly reproduce intelligence then inevitably at some point in the future we will have artificial intelligence even if we have to program some meat to use the same building materials nature used with us. Other uses could be to adapt humans to non-terran environments. Base-line in brain just tailored to an alternate environment.
What part of that statement was interesting?
If the bum down the street turns out to be right, Bush is the second incarnation of Cleopatra and Kim Jong Il is the reincarnation of Marc Anthony and they will eventually get it on. Both this statement and Penroses are baseless speculations from a flake.
Wait didn't another firm patent artificial life. The gall of these people, working hard to create something new. Thats simply un-American. They should really make vague patents wait for someone else to do the work and sue.
It seems strange to me that blizzard would not have been able to pull off ghost to their own standard of quality. From the sound of it, it would seem that the designers didn't have a good idea of what they wanted from the start. Also, they need to realize that in a market flooded with shooters, it is hard to put one out nowadays that is new and does something that hasn't been done before. I think if they had a good idea of what they wanted from the start and a solid plan for how to make it happen, SC: Ghost could have turned out great. Not revolutionary, mind you, but a good, fun, solid stealth-shooter. I honestly don't think it isn't for any amount of timing or flow that Ghost slipped through the cracks, it was just poor expectations and poor planning. That's just my opinion though.
Also realize they had outsourced the work to another studio. When it came back crap they canceled/out it on hold.
Truly exceptional game shave always been few and far between. Right now a year there is more good games out a year (numerically) then before. In the past few months we got some very high quality games. Odin Sphere, Etrian Oddissey, puzzle quest and cooking mama are just a few examples of non-sequel games ot have been release recently.
Fully agree - but CD quality was never as good a vinyl through the right equipment. Bob Dylan had a lot to say about that a few months back. To his ears there just haven't been any CDs that have achieved what vinyl, with the right engineers handling the mix, used to.
Ohhh. really. I have a pair of thousand dollar cables to sell you.....
Realistically most ears can't hear the distinction between new vinyl and a CD / MP3. I can't tell reasonable bitrate Mp3, CD, or vinyl. They simply are good enough for most.
Or perhaps its just your incorrect, twisted, and biased view of the world, and not my so called 'lack of real information'.
And its apparent that you don't even understand my signature in the slightest. Think outside the tiny little box you operate out of sometime.
Just for the record, grammar and typo checking here isn't worth the trouble.
The only context your signature makes sense for me is from a confederate perspective. To the south he may have been a patriot, risking his life to murder a man for ideological reasons. However in an American context the assasin of a well regaurded Us president is by definition not a patriot. His motivation was disatisfaction with the souths defeat as well as objecting to Slaves voting.
combining this confederate bent with some of the truly ignroant "bomb them all" comments you've made frames you as a ignorant Bigot. If this isn't true would you want to clarify your position.
Cleary his point is suspect due to his signature. His over all lack of any real information about the world is apparent from his other posts and his grammar just helps make a point that you cannot take him seriously.
That changes nothing about what the original poster was saying. Vastly overstating a case does no good, and often does harm. If you tell me that the government is severely fucking over my freedoms, and I then come to discover you are full of shit, I am much less likely to listen to you in the future. The whole "boy who cried wolf" thing.
If you want to get your message out you need to be accurate. In this case, this whole thing is amazingly overstated. The guidelines are for people with security clearance, and the FBI isn't suggesting that universities apply them to students. That isn't to argue that this is a good thing, but please let's be accurate with what is going on.
Slashdot could be a pretty good source for news on governmental restrictions of freedom, but most of the time they vastly overstate what is going on. Thus it doesn't take someone long to conclude the people are full of shit and start ignoring it. Trying to rationalize it with a pithy saying does nothing but further show that it is about sensationalism, not truth.
You can cry wolf as often as you want as long as the cry is wrapped in the appropriate ideological rhetoric and bullshit. See the same stupid shits beat the same stupid drum about "gay marriage ruining our families", "abortion ruining our communities", "interracial marriage ruining our clean white blood line", "IP copyright infringement ruining artists ability to create", "Evolution ruining our future zealots and fanatics". IF anything history tells us that if you don't wrap your message in so much sesationalist bullshit and rhetoric you will be ignored.
US perception: Arab funded, well organized, competent, and intelligent organization who wishes to cleanse America from the earth. Just waiting to do more 911 gang banging.
Reality: Previously US Government funded, random group of religious nuts who wish to wipe Israel from the face of the middle east. They got lucky once and haven't done much since.
Worrying about them is like obsessing over how you'd spend you lotto winnings. It's worrying an event unlikely to effect you in any way.
-Mascots for respective companies -Champions of Fanboys of each side -Jump on enemies to kill them -Power ups give you an extra hit before you die -hidden area contain more power ups -collect X items for a free man -Every so often there is a boss -Some power ups give you temporary invincibility -certain geographic features allow you to jump higher
They aren't the same and there were neat things in Sonic but they are close enough. It's initial intention was to create a rival mascot Mario. Sonic appears very much a focus group invention. Attempting to appeal to teenage boys bay being Xtreme, cool, and random manufactured garbage like that. The game itself was part of a genre initially created by Mario and while it did bring some innovations it wasn't that deviant from the established forms.
The very rich are energy sources, in a way. How their energy "plume" is spread is very much like the first and second law... it will go to where it is most "effective".
But they are a strange energy source, that doesn't deplete itself (making money with money). so you got me, the analogy falls apart there. In fact, the only way to deplete that energy source is by the very rich's own collossal stupidity, or violence... or the energy (money) itself getting deprived of its power (inflation). I guess you'd call leglislation violence as well.
But then, the fate of the ultra rich is pretty much beyond any particular countries' actions at this point... they can just move. no?
The rich create the empires. Their children squander it away. It diffuses with each successive generation.
I never had that much fun with sonic games. They tended to be more frustrating Mario clones. They had their moments and I enjoyed Sonic CD but it hasn't aged well. I think the brand name has been repeatidly tarnished. Not much more you can do to make it worth less.
Slashdot Mirror
Shit happens. It didn't make sense that Italy would get bogged down in backwards Ethiopia in WW2, that the English would lose a few battles to Zulus with spears, or that with our technology we can't conquer Iraq. Weirder things have happened.
Conquer is easy, hold is harder. If you cared less about PR and fully utilized your war machine you'd have won... but iraq would be a radioactive smoldering ruin and the other nations might align against you. You didn't defeat them completely enough for them to concede emotionally like Japan and Germany did and did not go out of your way to maintain law and order afterwards. You have vague goals, murky direction and poor leadership. Even with star trek level technology your current choice of leaders would have found a way to lose.
There's little reason to believe that our computer controlled cars will be capable of crashing in 50 years, much less so by the time we can build an interstellar craft capable of carrying crew.
Umm... our current systems aren't bug free and the occurance of bugs are pretty much uniform through out the history of computing. IT's a bit naive to think computer controlled cars will be crash proof.
We only have to look at the comparison between Vertabrates and Invertabrates to see how evolution favors certain characteristics.
Animals tend to have heads, at the leading end of the body. This head contains sensory organs, often eyes, but not limited to them. Antennae/trunks/feelers are also common, as well as ears (though ears may be elsewhere as well).
Also the head tends to contain a mouth-like orgain for feeding/drinking that often includes teeth or other specialized feeding aparatus. There is also a digestive tract throughout the body and abdomen, leading to a rectum or exit hole. There is also a kind of circulation system to move the necessities of life through the body.
Appendages such as arms or legs are common, as well as wings. They tend to have claws or appendages at the ends for grasping or manipulation.
There may be some things unique to intelligent species, such as a large brain organ, or nimble appendages.
But, then again, their life forms may be so much different as to be unimaginable. Nucular powered instead of solar/chemical powered? Non-Carbon based? Who knows.
Evolution can be confusing to some but you just rattled off traits that a common ancestor of mammals, amphibians, fish etc.. had. notable other successful animals lack these or have them in a weird analogue. They are useful but by not means requisite and who know what might happen if the universe did it all over again. It's like a game of chess. Any particular point in a valid game will seem logical at how it arrived but had eachplayer done things slightly differently it all might be very different.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. If the US demographically looked a LOT more like Cananda I'd think that a single-payer system would be more likely to work. US Cities have HUGE numbers of non-productive or only marginally-productive citizens that would be a large net-tax on health care.
Under a single-payer system the people paying for health care now would pay just as much for it if not more. But, they'd have to wait in line behind others who pay not nearly as much. The only ones who benefit are the ones who aren't paying for it now.
I think that most people would have sympathy for people who are of the same walk of life but just temporarily out of a job. The problem is the many more people who just aren't of the same walk of life - they live marginally and people resent paying a lot of money to care for them, as they don't feel like it will ever be reciprocated.
Statistic information about who gets treatment actually suggest the opposite. The biggest users of the system here are the middle and upper middle class. The proper upper class would have fared the same in either system (the really rich just head south for treatment). Those who have marginal income but still utilize the system still indirectly benefit the main payer (the middle class). Health costs is the leading cause of bankruptcy and main contributer to poverty and crime follows poverty and the largest target of crime is the middle class. A round about argument but if you investigate the number (CA crime rates vs US crime rates) you'll notice there are a great deal less crimes of desperation here.
Then we agree. Both systems are foobar just that there are not that many "objective" people that can admit it. I have lived 10 years in the US, and about near triple that in in Canadian system and can honestly say they BOTH have serious problems. I am going to get the revenge of the mod down but what the heck..
The US system is systemically fucked and is beyond repair short of boot fucking all the insurance companies and going back to square one. The Canadian system is stressed by the number of aging boomer's and will be fixed when they die. It still works reasonably well. Also our system is essentially a public system with a public payer. It's not perfect in Canada but it's reasonable given the situation.
In Canada he got grilled by their press for misrepresenting how many people are dying waiting for operations.
They are. News to me. I live here and no one in my immediate circle of acquaintances nor anyone in the local or national news.
I'm not obese...I'm not even mildly overweight, and I exercise regularly. Why should I have to pay extra for health care because other people live unhealthy lifestyles?
Because you are a part of that society. If you don't like it move. Just not to Canada, we already have a whole province of sniveling whiners.
In Canada the gov pays 1/2 as much on our behalf for a longer life expectancy. There are wait list for surgeries but is more demographic problem then any real problem with the system. Any pay as you go system with a large number of upcoming takes and a smaller pool of givers is going to have some of these problems. But they are ironed out with time and a stable demographic spread. Considering your private system takes twice as much funds from the government per person then our public system, and a non-trivial portion of your population is uninsured or under insured I'd be careful about pointing fingers.
Inefficiency rarely exceeds profit margins in similar industries. See US Health care per person government expenditure vs Canadian per person expenditure. You spend double to achieve a worse over all result because someone has to make their 66%-200%.
If Penrose turns out to be right (The Emperor's New Mind) and quantum-like operations are needed to truly reproduce intelligence then inevitably at some point in the future we will have artificial intelligence even if we have to program some meat to use the same building materials nature used with us.
Other uses could be to adapt humans to non-terran environments. Base-line in brain just tailored to an alternate environment.
What part of that statement was interesting?
If the bum down the street turns out to be right, Bush is the second incarnation of Cleopatra and Kim Jong Il is the reincarnation of Marc Anthony and they will eventually get it on. Both this statement and Penroses are baseless speculations from a flake.
Wait didn't another firm patent artificial life. The gall of these people, working hard to create something new. Thats simply un-American. They should really make vague patents wait for someone else to do the work and sue.
It seems strange to me that blizzard would not have been able to pull off ghost to their own standard of quality. From the sound of it, it would seem that the designers didn't have a good idea of what they wanted from the start. Also, they need to realize that in a market flooded with shooters, it is hard to put one out nowadays that is new and does something that hasn't been done before. I think if they had a good idea of what they wanted from the start and a solid plan for how to make it happen, SC: Ghost could have turned out great. Not revolutionary, mind you, but a good, fun, solid stealth-shooter. I honestly don't think it isn't for any amount of timing or flow that Ghost slipped through the cracks, it was just poor expectations and poor planning. That's just my opinion though.
Also realize they had outsourced the work to another studio. When it came back crap they canceled/out it on hold.
Up here in canada our games are just as expensive as ever.
1990 Dragon warrior 2 : $55.00 + tax
2007 Odin Sphere: $59.95 + tax
marginal increase due to inflation but otheriwse the same.
Truly exceptional game shave always been few and far between. Right now a year there is more good games out a year (numerically) then before. In the past few months we got some very high quality games. Odin Sphere, Etrian Oddissey, puzzle quest and cooking mama are just a few examples of non-sequel games ot have been release recently.
Fully agree - but CD quality was never as good a vinyl through the right equipment. Bob Dylan had a lot to say about that a few months back. To his ears there just haven't been any CDs that have achieved what vinyl, with the right engineers handling the mix, used to.
Ohhh. really. I have a pair of thousand dollar cables to sell you.....
Realistically most ears can't hear the distinction between new vinyl and a CD / MP3. I can't tell reasonable bitrate Mp3, CD, or vinyl. They simply are good enough for most.
Or perhaps its just your incorrect, twisted, and biased view of the world, and not my so called 'lack of real information'.
And its apparent that you don't even understand my signature in the slightest. Think outside the tiny little box you operate out of sometime.
Just for the record, grammar and typo checking here isn't worth the trouble.
The only context your signature makes sense for me is from a confederate perspective. To the south he may have been a patriot, risking his life to murder a man for ideological reasons. However in an American context the assasin of a well regaurded Us president is by definition not a patriot. His motivation was disatisfaction with the souths defeat as well as objecting to Slaves voting.
combining this confederate bent with some of the truly ignroant "bomb them all" comments you've made frames you as a ignorant Bigot. If this isn't true would you want to clarify your position.
Cleary his point is suspect due to his signature. His over all lack of any real information about the world is apparent from his other posts and his grammar just helps make a point that you cannot take him seriously.
But if they were accurate on stuff like this, they wouldn't work everyone that doesnt haev time to read the story ito a frenzy.
It also gives the Bush bashers an excuse to bitch and moan ( as pretty obvious from upper posts )
--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Clearly a unbiased individual with good spelling and valid point.
That changes nothing about what the original poster was saying. Vastly overstating a case does no good, and often does harm. If you tell me that the government is severely fucking over my freedoms, and I then come to discover you are full of shit, I am much less likely to listen to you in the future. The whole "boy who cried wolf" thing.
If you want to get your message out you need to be accurate. In this case, this whole thing is amazingly overstated. The guidelines are for people with security clearance, and the FBI isn't suggesting that universities apply them to students. That isn't to argue that this is a good thing, but please let's be accurate with what is going on.
Slashdot could be a pretty good source for news on governmental restrictions of freedom, but most of the time they vastly overstate what is going on. Thus it doesn't take someone long to conclude the people are full of shit and start ignoring it. Trying to rationalize it with a pithy saying does nothing but further show that it is about sensationalism, not truth.
You can cry wolf as often as you want as long as the cry is wrapped in the appropriate ideological rhetoric and bullshit. See the same stupid shits beat the same stupid drum about "gay marriage ruining our families", "abortion ruining our communities", "interracial marriage ruining our clean white blood line", "IP copyright infringement ruining artists ability to create", "Evolution ruining our future zealots and fanatics". IF anything history tells us that if you don't wrap your message in so much sesationalist bullshit and rhetoric you will be ignored.
Al Qaeda
US perception:
Arab funded, well organized, competent, and intelligent organization who wishes to cleanse America from the earth. Just waiting to do more 911 gang banging.
Reality:
Previously US Government funded, random group of religious nuts who wish to wipe Israel from the face of the middle east. They got lucky once and haven't done much since.
Worrying about them is like obsessing over how you'd spend you lotto winnings. It's worrying an event unlikely to effect you in any way.
Similarities
-Mascots for respective companies
-Champions of Fanboys of each side
-Jump on enemies to kill them
-Power ups give you an extra hit before you die
-hidden area contain more power ups
-collect X items for a free man
-Every so often there is a boss
-Some power ups give you temporary invincibility
-certain geographic features allow you to jump higher
They aren't the same and there were neat things in Sonic but they are close enough. It's initial intention was to create a rival mascot Mario. Sonic appears very much a focus group invention. Attempting to appeal to teenage boys bay being Xtreme, cool, and random manufactured garbage like that. The game itself was part of a genre initially created by Mario and while it did bring some innovations it wasn't that deviant from the established forms.
You're right, there is more to it.
The very rich are energy sources, in a way. How their energy "plume" is spread is very much like the first and second law... it will go to where it is most "effective".
But they are a strange energy source, that doesn't deplete itself (making money with money). so you got me, the analogy falls apart there. In fact, the only way to deplete that energy source is by the very rich's own collossal stupidity, or violence... or the energy (money) itself getting deprived of its power (inflation). I guess you'd call leglislation violence as well.
But then, the fate of the ultra rich is pretty much beyond any particular countries' actions at this point... they can just move. no?
The rich create the empires. Their children squander it away. It diffuses with each successive generation.
I never had that much fun with sonic games. They tended to be more frustrating Mario clones. They had their moments and I enjoyed Sonic CD but it hasn't aged well. I think the brand name has been repeatidly tarnished. Not much more you can do to make it worth less.
Why did they go back? I think they were more dependant then they thought and went back in a more limited fashion to protest their dependence.
open borders and a welfare state are mutually exclusive.
Well... the EU? Each state is basically open to eahc other. Most are welfare states.