Now they had 1 bug and one design flaw that ruined this choice. The bug was that computer controlled enemies only targetted some of your armour outfit. So you simply wore only part of an armour set getting the high resists but not the high penalty.
I didn't play this game, but that doesn't sound like a bug. Certain pieces of armor have always been more valuable than others. That's life. Ever see those training films where a guy is fending off a vicious dog with only a leather glove and gauntlet? Have you ever studied, say, a Roman legionnaire's armor?
So you had all the leet kiddies running around in their underwear and partial armour calling those choosing full armour of full clothes noobs.
Written by Jim Prendergast, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership. Microsoft Corporation is a founding member of ATL.
This article is filled with so much bullshit it's difficult to know where to begin rebutting it:
OpenDocument applications would have to be built from the ground up.
Pure FUD. Applications already exist that implement OpenDocument. In fact, OpenOffice is mentioned in the article right in the next paragraph! Anyways, adding a new file format or converter to an existing application is easy enough to be trivial.
Massachusetts may be aligning with what becomes a second-rate file format as Microsoft keeps expanding into XML and metadata and OpenDocument may have trouble keeping up.
Yeah, we all know Microsoft are the ones "innovating" with XML and those who choose an open format will be left out of all the great new proprietary lock-ins that MS will come up with. Give me a break. Reality is, if Massachussets goes with an open format, other states will follow, and Microsoft will do their best job of implementing it poorly to try to kill it. Same... as... always... (yawn)
The policy promises enormous and unnecessary migration costs to Massachusetts' taxpayers.
Yes it does. And so do Microsoft's closed formats. The difference is, this cost is basically one-time. Those other costs are recurring and arbitrary.
Businesses, organizations and citizens who interact with the state will also be forced to support Massachusetts' mandated technologies.
And they already do. The difference is, this mandatory technology is open and can be implemented by anyone, for free. Microsoft's mandatory formats require you to use Microsoft products, on a Microsoft operating system, on a computer built by a Microsoft partner.
Government is not directly in the business of innovation, but it should support policies that drive innovation.
So, do paved roads stand in the way of innovation? Should government outsource that as well? Are we really expecting a growth of *innovative* new ways to exchange text?
The main advantage to using Microsoft products in an office environment is that, in large measure, these products provide very reliable interoperability and rich functionality. Since most of our users are not IT experts, such interoperability and functionality are critical to the day to day operation of our offices.... We are unaware of any organizations with which we exchange documents that use products such as OpenOffice or StarOffice.
Obviously, not IT experts. Sounds like they don't even have IT personnel. Not even halfway knowledgeable users. They don't realize that OpenOffice and others do an exceptional job of reading and writing Microsoft's reverse-engineered proprietary file formats. And they think sticking with those file formats is the way to foster "interoperability". Ah, well, I should expect nothing less from an article written by yet another Microsoft shill.
Oh, that was the point of the video? It wasn't completely obvious for someone who's never played the game. They made Jedi's worthless now that everybody can be one. Hmm, my irony meter is exploding. Doesn't this sound like it should be an archetype by now?
a) Small group discovers valuable secret knowledge/abilities. b) Knowledge gives small group seemingly magical powers. c) Group's reputation grows. d) Group decides to distribute knowledge to everyone, for selfish or selfless reasons. e) Not everyone is up to the task. f) Value of knowledge becomes diluted as it becomes widespread. g) Regardless, group's self-view inflates wildly out of proportion to reality. h) Group pisses off the wrong person/people. i) Killing younglings ?!?!
*No roads And what do you call what we have now? I call it "rocks, holes, and unofficial speedbumps". I'm considering throwing in the towel on trying to maintain an SUV, for gods sake, because I can't drive regularly without something getting screwed up on it: shock absorbers, electrical problems, etc.
*No police protection Good. The last instance of "police protection" I received was being pulled over and ticketed $20 for not wearing a seatbelt. I'd pay not to get that kind of "protection".
*No fire departments We've had three cases here recently of firemen getting caught starting fires. Two weeks ago there were twelve mysterious grassfires all over the state in one day. And guess who put them out? Volunteer fire departments.
*No primary or secondary education
*As a result of which, 90% of our middle class would be being paid substinance level wages, working 12-16 hour days to be able to eat. You know, like we did before we enacted regulations to stop that shit. You can get an education without the help of the government. And if you're too dumb to do so, you're better off working 12 hours a day, because it would be wasted on you. By the way, my mother has a college degree, and works 10 hours a day in a factory, so let's not pretend that education has much to do with working conditions or job availability.
*No military, so we'd likely be part of China by now If I had back the taxes that I pay and freedoms that I sacrifice to support all the ridiculous US military excursions around the globe, I'd do just fine defending my country the way it was intended to be defended: by citizens, not by mercenaries. As it is, the US government more often attacks US citizens and creates terrorists and dictators than protects us from foreign threats. And the Chinese nuclear arsenal was built by a man educated through the generosity of the US taxpayer. So, no, I don't exactly see how my taxes are being used to protect us from China, or anyone else.
*No social security, so we'd have elderly people competing for jobs in order to live I don't give a shit. Young people compete for jobs in order to live. There's nothing magical about the elderly that makes them immune to the decisions they have made in their lifetime, good and bad. Life sucks, you have 70 years to learn to deal with it. If you haven't done so by then, tough. Don't expect to impose your stupidity on future generations.
*A large homeless problem, as elderly people will frequently lose the competition Elderly people can live with their families, like they have done for thousands of years. Those without families should have that much more retirement money to live off of.
*A much lower expected lifespan, due to the above and lack of medicaid Yeah well everybody dies. Get over yourself. And lifespan is more affected by improvements in healthcare for the young than by using the elderly as an excuse to ruin the economy.
*Garbage all over, since we wouldn't have garbage pickup and people would refuse to pay I have (private) garbage pickup. And I pay for it. And if I didn't, it would get burnt in an incinerator or buried in the backyard, which is exactly what the garbage people do with it anyways.
Hydrogen Hydroxide is perfectly safe! Don't let the anti-DHMO lobby tell you otherwise:
The Coalition and others have popularized the label "dihydrogen monoxide" over the more chemically-accurate "hydrogen hydroxide" because they know how loaded the former name is. "Monoxide" has become synonymous with pollution, toxic gases, industrial waste-- and while hydrogen hydroxide is sometimes a factor in these problems facing our world today, it is rarely the dangerous element.
Not only that, but it takes only a few short years for an urban area to go from nice and tolerable to downright oppressive. And if you're "stuck" there, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. At least in the country, you can put up big fences, plant trees, and shoot anyone who enters your property.
The real harm done by the fads is that they distract people from the real choices that much be made.
Sorry, but those fads *are* the real choices that must be made. And nuclear is one of them. In a larger sense, economics and the free market is really just a system for letting people make those choices. And it's looking like there will be no clear, single choice like there was with petroleum.
While biofuels and renewable energy sources come and go, in some places they stick. And each new alternative is in some way better than the previous. As you go from ethanol, to methanol, to biodiesel, to electric, via nuclear or coal, there are trade-offs that must be made. You trade ease-of-handling for higher yields. You trade decentralization for lower yields and greater stability. You trade pollution, of all types. You trade using waste products to produce a poor fuel for using waste products to fill landfills. You trade cheaper fuel for shorter range, or lower power. You trade worse yields today for the prospect of better yields in the future.
The important thing is that there is no one choice for everyone. And no one will make the choice for you. The choice for someone who has 100 acres of desert will be different than that for someone who has 10 acres of trees, or for someone who has 1 acre on the coast or on a mountaintop, or someone who has 1/4 acre in the city.
The Great Depression was a product of the free market. Our entire way of life is dependent upon oil in ways that are difficult to realize even with the most comprehensive economic models. And when oil goes, our standard of living will suffer in one way or another.
It's that simple. Oil is the single most massive, easily obtained energy resource humans have ever found. And we've used it all in a single century. We've used it to fly across the globe for frivilous reasons, to drive around in tank-like vehicles, and to build armies to wreak destruction on each other. We've used it to create a disposable society, and to fill our landfills with worthless trinkets and shiny objects that will never decompose. We've used it to fill the air with pollutants that may cause global climate change, to fill the world with people living in places that could otherwise not sustain them, and, worst of all, to fill the hearts of the next generation with a false hope of the permanance and continuance of human progress.
As for capitalism saving the day, it hasn't yet. Oil companies don't charge a realistic market rate for their products. By and large, they don't take the profits and invest them in alternatives. I'm reminded of the news story prior to Y2K that showed a successful computer programmer purchasing a farm and horses because he had no faith in the robustness of the new economy. That's what I imagine oil executives doing. Only, instead of buying farms, I imagine them buying huge houses on tiny lots in the suburbs that require $500/mo heating bills. I imagine them building statues that read "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
That's true. Bones et cetera do already have alternative uses. But the fact is that there are far, far more carcasses than are needed to produce stock for soups. It's still basically a waste product looking for a use.
Like you said, most people nowadays can probably live without stock, but probably not without transportation fuel. And if dog food goes up in price, something tells me I won't shed any tears.
Not only are the systems you suggest nearly twice the price of the Linksys, in six months the price of the Linksys will be even less. And three years from now, when the current wireless standard goes away to be replaced with another, I can pick up a Linksys for almost nothing and use it for something more useful than filling a trash dump.
if one believes in natural cause and effect, then one cannot believe that god destroyed new orleans for being a city of sin. One cannot believe that god sent AIDS to kill the infidels of sub saharan africa. One cannot believe that one or two or a few people have a holy authority to dominate the rest of the world. One cannot believe that killing people who look different of believe different from you will result in your ascent to the promised land.
Sure you can. Just depends on what you believe the original "cause" is. Somehow I don't think there is even yet a theory of an ultimate "natural" cause.
Church, unfortuntaly in many cases, has become the last holdout to a civilized society. Nowhere else can one legally hire on the basis of color or belief, caste out on the basis of belief, and get away with hate speech. The evolution debate is one of the last gasps in a long war perpetuated by those who profit off discrimination and hate. Many more will be hurt because those who are willing to kill for profit are vanquished.
Now listen to you. Who's "imposing their will on other people" now? Who's casting their arguments in terms of good versus evil? You want the freedom to propagate your speech, on the public dime no less, yet you would deny the same right to others based on your arbitrary determination of what is "hateful"?
You believe taking money from the public in order to fund an agenda with which you happen to agree is "civilized". And those who are in opposition to your agenda, in fact, who are being targeted by it, disagree. Why should my government support either of you via my taxes?
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Right, you don't have to swear on a bible. Most jurisdictions don't use a bible anymore anyways.
support constitutional rights, which are they keys to democratic government.
Can you explain what you mean by this?
At some point, old tech has to make way for new.
I agree. But that's not all this is. It's also free tech making way for a protected monopoly.
Now they had 1 bug and one design flaw that ruined this choice. The bug was that computer controlled enemies only targetted some of your armour outfit. So you simply wore only part of an armour set getting the high resists but not the high penalty.
I didn't play this game, but that doesn't sound like a bug. Certain pieces of armor have always been more valuable than others. That's life. Ever see those training films where a guy is fending off a vicious dog with only a leather glove and gauntlet? Have you ever studied, say, a Roman legionnaire's armor?
So you had all the leet kiddies running around in their underwear and partial armour calling those choosing full armour of full clothes noobs.
See, that sounds exactly like the Roman army.
Insert comment about secret clone army for the republic here.
Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument
Written by Jim Prendergast, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership. Microsoft Corporation is a founding member of ATL.
This article is filled with so much bullshit it's difficult to know where to begin rebutting it:
OpenDocument applications would have to be built from the ground up.
Pure FUD. Applications already exist that implement OpenDocument. In fact, OpenOffice is mentioned in the article right in the next paragraph! Anyways, adding a new file format or converter to an existing application is easy enough to be trivial.
Massachusetts may be aligning with what becomes a second-rate file format as Microsoft
keeps expanding into XML and metadata and OpenDocument may have trouble keeping up.
Yeah, we all know Microsoft are the ones "innovating" with XML and those who choose an open format will be left out of all the great new proprietary lock-ins that MS will come up with. Give me a break. Reality is, if Massachussets goes with an open format, other states will follow, and Microsoft will do their best job of implementing it poorly to try to kill it. Same... as... always... (yawn)
The policy promises enormous and unnecessary migration costs to Massachusetts' taxpayers.
Yes it does. And so do Microsoft's closed formats. The difference is, this cost is basically one-time. Those other costs are recurring and arbitrary.
Businesses, organizations and citizens who interact with the state will also be forced to support Massachusetts' mandated technologies.
And they already do. The difference is, this mandatory technology is open and can be implemented by anyone, for free. Microsoft's mandatory formats require you to use Microsoft products, on a Microsoft operating system, on a computer built by a Microsoft partner.
Government is not directly in the business of innovation, but it should support policies that drive innovation.
So, do paved roads stand in the way of innovation? Should government outsource that as well? Are we really expecting a growth of *innovative* new ways to exchange text?
The main advantage to using Microsoft products in an office environment is that, in large measure, these products provide very reliable interoperability and rich functionality. Since most of our users are not IT experts, such interoperability and functionality are critical to the day to day operation of our offices.... We are unaware of any organizations with which we exchange documents that use products such as OpenOffice or StarOffice.
Obviously, not IT experts. Sounds like they don't even have IT personnel. Not even halfway knowledgeable users. They don't realize that OpenOffice and others do an exceptional job of reading and writing Microsoft's reverse-engineered proprietary file formats. And they think sticking with those file formats is the way to foster "interoperability". Ah, well, I should expect nothing less from an article written by yet another Microsoft shill.
Oh, that was the point of the video? It wasn't completely obvious for someone who's never played the game. They made Jedi's worthless now that everybody can be one. Hmm, my irony meter is exploding. Doesn't this sound like it should be an archetype by now?
a) Small group discovers valuable secret knowledge/abilities.
b) Knowledge gives small group seemingly magical powers.
c) Group's reputation grows.
d) Group decides to distribute knowledge to everyone, for selfish or selfless reasons.
e) Not everyone is up to the task.
f) Value of knowledge becomes diluted as it becomes widespread.
g) Regardless, group's self-view inflates wildly out of proportion to reality.
h) Group pisses off the wrong person/people.
i) Killing younglings ?!?!
Step One: pick demographic
a) Fat nerds without lives or money looking for an escape
OR
b) Hyperactive, attention deficit teenagers who like destroying things
Step Two: create videogame
a) Cheap, unstructured role-playing game that runs on office computers
OR
b) Expensive shoot-em-up requiring $300 video card
Step Three: advertise to said demographic
a) Slashdot, Wired, etc.
OR
b) CNet, ZDnet, etc.
Step Four: profit!!!
I'll leave it as an exercise to see how Sony/LucasArts fscked this up completely.
*No roads
And what do you call what we have now? I call it "rocks, holes, and unofficial speedbumps". I'm considering throwing in the towel on trying to maintain an SUV, for gods sake, because I can't drive regularly without something getting screwed up on it: shock absorbers, electrical problems, etc.
*No police protection
Good. The last instance of "police protection" I received was being pulled over and ticketed $20 for not wearing a seatbelt. I'd pay not to get that kind of "protection".
*No fire departments
We've had three cases here recently of firemen getting caught starting fires. Two weeks ago there were twelve mysterious grassfires all over the state in one day. And guess who put them out? Volunteer fire departments.
*No primary or secondary education
*As a result of which, 90% of our middle class would be being paid substinance level wages, working 12-16 hour days to be able to eat. You know, like we did before we enacted regulations to stop that shit.
You can get an education without the help of the government. And if you're too dumb to do so, you're better off working 12 hours a day, because it would be wasted on you. By the way, my mother has a college degree, and works 10 hours a day in a factory, so let's not pretend that education has much to do with working conditions or job availability.
*No military, so we'd likely be part of China by now
If I had back the taxes that I pay and freedoms that I sacrifice to support all the ridiculous US military excursions around the globe, I'd do just fine defending my country the way it was intended to be defended: by citizens, not by mercenaries. As it is, the US government more often attacks US citizens and creates terrorists and dictators than protects us from foreign threats. And the Chinese nuclear arsenal was built by a man educated through the generosity of the US taxpayer. So, no, I don't exactly see how my taxes are being used to protect us from China, or anyone else.
*No social security, so we'd have elderly people competing for jobs in order to live
I don't give a shit. Young people compete for jobs in order to live. There's nothing magical about the elderly that makes them immune to the decisions they have made in their lifetime, good and bad. Life sucks, you have 70 years to learn to deal with it. If you haven't done so by then, tough. Don't expect to impose your stupidity on future generations.
*A large homeless problem, as elderly people will frequently lose the competition
Elderly people can live with their families, like they have done for thousands of years. Those without families should have that much more retirement money to live off of.
*A much lower expected lifespan, due to the above and lack of medicaid
Yeah well everybody dies. Get over yourself. And lifespan is more affected by improvements in healthcare for the young than by using the elderly as an excuse to ruin the economy.
*Garbage all over, since we wouldn't have garbage pickup and people would refuse to pay
I have (private) garbage pickup. And I pay for it. And if I didn't, it would get burnt in an incinerator or buried in the backyard, which is exactly what the garbage people do with it anyways.
That's ironic coming from someone with a made-up word in their sig.
Private schools are good not because the teachers are better, but because the students all come from good backgrounds.
Around here, good backgrounds or not, a large portion of the students at private schools are there because they were expelled from public schools.
my parents pay taxes for kids that attend private schools
You must be incredibly stupid to even believe this, let alone do it. Where do you live?
Most come with "ordered" mode enabled. It's faster than full journalling, and, for a desktop at least, usually just as effective:
Ext3's ordered mode guarantees that file data gets written to the disk before the corresponding metadata gets committed to the journal.
And the saltpetre he's referring to, used in WWI, came from Chile.
How has Slashdot moderation become so broken?
Photochemical Generation of Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen by Reduction of Carbon Dioxide and Water under Visible Light Irradiation
quite informative
Not only that, but it takes only a few short years for an urban area to go from nice and tolerable to downright oppressive. And if you're "stuck" there, there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. At least in the country, you can put up big fences, plant trees, and shoot anyone who enters your property.
The real harm done by the fads is that they distract people from the real choices that much be made.
Sorry, but those fads *are* the real choices that must be made. And nuclear is one of them. In a larger sense, economics and the free market is really just a system for letting people make those choices. And it's looking like there will be no clear, single choice like there was with petroleum.
While biofuels and renewable energy sources come and go, in some places they stick. And each new alternative is in some way better than the previous. As you go from ethanol, to methanol, to biodiesel, to electric, via nuclear or coal, there are trade-offs that must be made. You trade ease-of-handling for higher yields. You trade decentralization for lower yields and greater stability. You trade pollution, of all types. You trade using waste products to produce a poor fuel for using waste products to fill landfills. You trade cheaper fuel for shorter range, or lower power. You trade worse yields today for the prospect of better yields in the future.
The important thing is that there is no one choice for everyone. And no one will make the choice for you. The choice for someone who has 100 acres of desert will be different than that for someone who has 10 acres of trees, or for someone who has 1 acre on the coast or on a mountaintop, or someone who has 1/4 acre in the city.
The Great Depression was a product of the free market. Our entire way of life is dependent upon oil in ways that are difficult to realize even with the most comprehensive economic models. And when oil goes, our standard of living will suffer in one way or another.
It's that simple. Oil is the single most massive, easily obtained energy resource humans have ever found. And we've used it all in a single century. We've used it to fly across the globe for frivilous reasons, to drive around in tank-like vehicles, and to build armies to wreak destruction on each other. We've used it to create a disposable society, and to fill our landfills with worthless trinkets and shiny objects that will never decompose. We've used it to fill the air with pollutants that may cause global climate change, to fill the world with people living in places that could otherwise not sustain them, and, worst of all, to fill the hearts of the next generation with a false hope of the permanance and continuance of human progress.
As for capitalism saving the day, it hasn't yet. Oil companies don't charge a realistic market rate for their products. By and large, they don't take the profits and invest them in alternatives. I'm reminded of the news story prior to Y2K that showed a successful computer programmer purchasing a farm and horses because he had no faith in the robustness of the new economy. That's what I imagine oil executives doing. Only, instead of buying farms, I imagine them buying huge houses on tiny lots in the suburbs that require $500/mo heating bills. I imagine them building statues that read "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
That's true. Bones et cetera do already have alternative uses. But the fact is that there are far, far more carcasses than are needed to produce stock for soups. It's still basically a waste product looking for a use.
Like you said, most people nowadays can probably live without stock, but probably not without transportation fuel. And if dog food goes up in price, something tells me I won't shed any tears.
Not only are the systems you suggest nearly twice the price of the Linksys, in six months the price of the Linksys will be even less. And three years from now, when the current wireless standard goes away to be replaced with another, I can pick up a Linksys for almost nothing and use it for something more useful than filling a trash dump.
You're assuming I want to use it as a firewall.
Some of these things have miniPCI slots. It could be used for any number of useful things.
I'd like to have a cheap, low-power machine to run an Asterisk gateway personally.
I don't think most of the movies he reviews are art either.
if one believes in natural cause and effect, then one cannot believe that god destroyed new orleans for being a city of sin. One cannot believe that god sent AIDS to kill the infidels of sub saharan africa. One cannot believe that one or two or a few people have a holy authority to dominate the rest of the world. One cannot believe that killing people who look different of believe different from you will result in your ascent to the promised land.
Sure you can. Just depends on what you believe the original "cause" is. Somehow I don't think there is even yet a theory of an ultimate "natural" cause.
Church, unfortuntaly in many cases, has become the last holdout to a civilized society. Nowhere else can one legally hire on the basis of color or belief, caste out on the basis of belief, and get away with hate speech. The evolution debate is one of the last gasps in a long war perpetuated by those who profit off discrimination and hate. Many more will be hurt because those who are willing to kill for profit are vanquished.
Now listen to you. Who's "imposing their will on other people" now? Who's casting their arguments in terms of good versus evil? You want the freedom to propagate your speech, on the public dime no less, yet you would deny the same right to others based on your arbitrary determination of what is "hateful"?
You believe taking money from the public in order to fund an agenda with which you happen to agree is "civilized". And those who are in opposition to your agenda, in fact, who are being targeted by it, disagree. Why should my government support either of you via my taxes?