According to NPR last week, you basically invented books-on-tape, including distribution of same. Given people have been snail mailing messages on tape to each other since at least the '70s (and I know Charles Emerson Winchester III sent and received reel-to-reel tapes with his rich family in M*A*S*H in the 50s, probably reflective of reality) how could people doiing this on the Internet be any differemt? The mass distribution aspect? Seems like a stretch, when it's the equivalent of an audio printing press.
There's solid reason to believe FDR's massive taxation prolonged the Great Depression, even as he was praised for lavishing it around hiring people.
This "Great Recession" can be seen as a second runthrough of that, with major warlike spending per capita.
Now why, one might wonder, did WWII spending lift us out but Great Depression (or Great Recession) spending didn't? Don't know, but it probably has to do with the spending itself. War spending is essentially paying for lots of custom or new types of manufacturing. Depression spending is throwing money at people who use it to buy things that area already very efficiently manufactured in high volume production (food, cheap clothes, already-build older housing). The fractional recycle is very low on those dollars.
I recommend a history course, where you learn the interesting parts about governments picking out groups (external, or small internal e.g. Jews) and focus popular hatred on them, for the purpose of distracting people from their shitty lives, made and kept so by the government itself, used as an argument for reducing freedom rather than increasing it.
It's not supposed to happen anymore...yet what's the main saying about history? Those who do not learn are doomed to repeat it.
One foot in one century. Take a timestamp of the quality of life today.
Then reverse time and put in place the necessary quash on industry to stop the warming causing most of the rise.
Now fast forward time and assume, for the sake of argument, it worked. Technology will be somewhat behind where it used to be, with attendant more deaths and lower quality of life.
Net result: More death. Lower quality of life. Fewer inventions.
This effect, which is obvious in places like China or India, in the West 200-100 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, still plays a major role in the advancement of the human condition.
The point is don't assume you will be doing anyone a favor by heaving still another $trillion or twenty of regulation and control on top of the economy.
Business people allow you to stand there making arm motions and get a house, car, and TV out of it, when, left to your own in a field, those motions would quickly get you starved to death.
The true comparison for the "common man" is that, not some warmed-over 1920s Workers of the World Unite pamplet.
Capitalism, having brouught cheap food, leading to the poor in the US being literally the fattest segment of society, the left has to shift goalposts.
Note they push health care or Obama phones or Intertubes-for-all now, 99% of which didn't even exist 40 years ago, and only exists because of a vibrant capitalist economy, the vast bulk of which is private, with a decent assist by government science, which can only be paid for by taxes on a vibrant, capitalist economy.
What keeps me on Windows is the same thing that made me switch from Mac 20 years ago -- games. Both could surf. Both had Word and Excel. Both had C programming IDEs.
What keeps me now? Nothing. Windows is where the Mac was then. The Mac got games that were PC ports, and only the most popular at that.
Here, Windows now gets the ports rather than native games, and console-oriented games at that. Very few powers, and frequently you must choose an even smaller subset to be active at that. So screw it.
I'd rather play simple stuff for smartphones and tablets than the MMORPGs of the past 3 years.
So nothing holds me to Windows except inertia. My next will probably be an Android tablet with bigger screen and mouse and keyboard, if such a thing can be configured, sitting on my sofa with everyone else on the planet simultaneously watching TV.
And MS, like Big Blue before it, can see why 2014 won't be like 1984.
> "it is very likely that Canadians have been caught up by these surveillance activities."
RC Secret MP: "Turn it up, what are they saying?" (turns up volume)
Person 1: "MMmmmm. That's some good backbacon, eh?" Person 2: "Ya, eh. Put some more maple syrup on it, eh." (sound of crunching crash in background) Person 2: "What was that, eh?" (some footsteps) Person 1: "Looks like another beaver cut down a tree and it almost hit the cabin, eh."
I heartily agree with the comment about orcs down the hall not hearing or seeing the attack on their colleagues and either coming to help or running away. it is, of course, a game design thing to make each encounter doable, rather than having to worry about more unpedictable situations where the group size suddenly doubles (the famed "ADD!!!") or quadruples because those who ran away came back with helpers.
Games have done limited variations on this:
- D&D Online, the monsters can hear you, and specifically will hear you smash a barrel on the other side of a closed door and wake up, being ready for your attack. Sound and sight matter, though still not quite as much as desired here.
- EverQuest and other games frequently have a monster run away through other packs, hoping you will stupidly follow and aggro a second group. Most people quickly learn not to do this. Sadly, the other pack doesn't join in in this case. I guess when tearing by, the monster under attack forgot to mention his colleagues were currently under assault.
- World of Warcraft had perhaps the most egregious example, where a group of two wandering (cycling on a large path) centaur "scouts" would attack you. You could kill one then run away. Eventually the other "scout" would give up and go back. Did he do what scouts are supposed to, hightail it back to camp and warn the others? No, he just resumes his path, making a mockery of the concept of being a "scout". Uhh, thanks for scouting for us, Beaky.
It's all this "idiocracy" of design that bothers me. I want to see dynamic, world-upsetting events and invasions. I don't mean one-shot stupidities, I mean real wars. I want to see cities invaded where the vendors and trainers get attacked and slaughtered, and the players don't know where to go anymore, so they'd better fight.
Death to the sentiment, "I don't wanna participate in that, and am irritated that I can't go do something else."
Well, nowadays we have enough games to accommodate you. Let's have a new one that shakes things up. Hell, for that matter, start out with a new principle: Ban all static zones and dungeons from design, and force designers to create a dynamic, ever-changing world. No more theme park zone designs, including safe cities.
Possibly but I have to think at least some of these billionaires would say hold on, and buy a half hour block of TV that evening to have a chat with America.
> I have had a 1080p 30fps dash cam with wide-angle lens, sound...
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you can see where the fraudulent accident "victim" deliberately heaves himself onto the hood. Listen to the thump, which is also incredibly soft. Listen carefully and try to ignore the foreground audio where the driver is singing along "I just met you, this is crazy, JLaw, feed me your pussy maybe..."
Sir, your gf was murdered last night. Where were you?
I refuse to answer.
You have just committed a crime. Also, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, his very refusal should be considered, by you, as implicit evidence of guilt.
That last part was a change England made some years back, over the objections of many.
If this issue really concerns you, perhaps you should read why it was added to the Constitution along with other rihts, which were also abused by those in power to remain in power.
Sir, you were at a political meeting last night. What were you doing there?
By tying the analysis to common criminality instead of the real motivation, government abuse of power to maintain its power, OP.demonstrates world-class, full-on, all-caps FAILURE OF IGNORANCE CLASS 1, 2, 3, 4, AND 5-719.
Consider what a G. Gordon Liddy partisan type would do with the secret, acknowledged pipeline from AT&T into that NSA room. Oh, he'd dutifully track terrorists...but hey, he can listen in to political opponents , who's to know? Report back in closed-room meetings, who's to know?
If you don't know who G. Gordon Liddy is, perhaps you know The Comedian, who's based on him, whose motivation to support the President goes beyond gray areas and a willingness to get his hands dirty into outright criminality.
Apparently it's lost on most people, what we would call the Fundamemtal Theorem of America, that we forbid, in a Constitutional way, some powers from government in their entirety.
Regardless of any beneficial use, they will be misused by those in power to remain in power.
Proof: All of human history
The solution: Blanket forbiddng of said powers completely. Then it can't eventually be misused.
And those powers that are granted have many checks and balances circumscribing their use. Removal of court, even secret court, oversight violates this Fundamental Theorem.
There is no oversight for the warrantless stuff. That was the big scam. Previously they could, in an emergency, eavesdrop and get permission from the FISA court later (which sometimes would be denied, even Clinton had stuff denied) but at least it was tracked and recorded for later Congressional review.
This...this is just bullshit. There is no excuse for not even have cursory court review after the fact.
When I was a CS grad student, I had a scraggly 2" beard and a big heavy winter coat. One, coincidentally, particularly frigid day I went and did what I frequently did, go stand for hours in the bookstore looking thru many books.
One of the young male workers, bless his soul, had seen me off and on over those hours, and said to me, "It sure is cold outside today, isn't it, sir?"
I used to work for an Indian guy whose wife was a gorgeous, full-lipped woman from the aristocracy, and who "had the tastes of a man", as evidenced by several receptionists who rejected her advances.
I often imagined if I were a sweet, young "untouchable" maid working for her back in India. "I'm no old-school prude," she'd say to me after I'd finished changing her sheets. "I'll touch you. Just lay down right here," as she patted the comforter next to her.
"I don't...this is wrong."
"It's OK. You like this job, it's much better than what you were doing in the slums, right?"
"I...yes. It's very nice here, ma'am." I said, as I lay back then pushed myself further up the bed with my feet. I closed my eyes, but felt my tight clothes loosening as her hads did things which made soft sounds. My tummy filled with dreadful butterflies...
Slashdot Mirror
According to NPR last week, you basically invented books-on-tape, including distribution of same. Given people have been snail mailing messages on tape to each other since at least the '70s (and I know Charles Emerson Winchester III sent and received reel-to-reel tapes with his rich family in M*A*S*H in the 50s, probably reflective of reality) how could people doiing this on the Internet be any differemt? The mass distribution aspect? Seems like a stretch, when it's the equivalent of an audio printing press.
There's solid reason to believe FDR's massive taxation prolonged the Great Depression, even as he was praised for lavishing it around hiring people.
This "Great Recession" can be seen as a second runthrough of that, with major warlike spending per capita.
Now why, one might wonder, did WWII spending lift us out but Great Depression (or Great Recession) spending didn't? Don't know, but it probably has to do with the spending itself. War spending is essentially paying for lots of custom or new types of manufacturing. Depression spending is throwing money at people who use it to buy things that area already very efficiently manufactured in high volume production (food, cheap clothes, already-build older housing). The fractional recycle is very low on those dollars.
I recommend a history course, where you learn the interesting parts about governments picking out groups (external, or small internal e.g. Jews) and focus popular hatred on them, for the purpose of distracting people from their shitty lives, made and kept so by the government itself, used as an argument for reducing freedom rather than increasing it.
It's not supposed to happen anymore...yet what's the main saying about history? Those who do not learn are doomed to repeat it.
One foot in one century. Take a timestamp of the quality of life today.
Then reverse time and put in place the necessary quash on industry to stop the warming causing most of the rise.
Now fast forward time and assume, for the sake of argument, it worked. Technology will be somewhat behind where it used to be, with attendant more deaths and lower quality of life.
Net result: More death. Lower quality of life. Fewer inventions.
This effect, which is obvious in places like China or India, in the West 200-100 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, still plays a major role in the advancement of the human condition.
The point is don't assume you will be doing anyone a favor by heaving still another $trillion or twenty of regulation and control on top of the economy.
Thanks, dude. Off to the bookstore!
Business people allow you to stand there making arm motions and get a house, car, and TV out of it, when, left to your own in a field, those motions would quickly get you starved to death.
The true comparison for the "common man" is that, not some warmed-over 1920s Workers of the World Unite pamplet.
Capitalism, having brouught cheap food, leading to the poor in the US being literally the fattest segment of society, the left has to shift goalposts.
Note they push health care or Obama phones or Intertubes-for-all now, 99% of which didn't even exist 40 years ago, and only exists because of a vibrant capitalist economy, the vast bulk of which is private, with a decent assist by government science, which can only be paid for by taxes on a vibrant, capitalist economy.
What keeps me on Windows is the same thing that made me switch from Mac 20 years ago -- games. Both could surf. Both had Word and Excel. Both had C programming IDEs.
What keeps me now? Nothing. Windows is where the Mac was then. The Mac got games that were PC ports, and only the most popular at that.
Here, Windows now gets the ports rather than native games, and console-oriented games at that. Very few powers, and frequently you must choose an even smaller subset to be active at that. So screw it.
I'd rather play simple stuff for smartphones and tablets than the MMORPGs of the past 3 years.
So nothing holds me to Windows except inertia. My next will probably be an Android tablet with bigger screen and mouse and keyboard, if such a thing can be configured, sitting on my sofa with everyone else on the planet simultaneously watching TV.
And MS, like Big Blue before it, can see why 2014 won't be like 1984.
> "it is very likely that Canadians have been caught up by these surveillance activities."
RC Secret MP: "Turn it up, what are they saying?"
(turns up volume)
Person 1: "MMmmmm. That's some good backbacon, eh?"
Person 2: "Ya, eh. Put some more maple syrup on it, eh."
(sound of crunching crash in background)
Person 2: "What was that, eh?"
(some footsteps)
Person 1: "Looks like another beaver cut down a tree and it almost hit the cabin, eh."
I heartily agree with the comment about orcs down the hall not hearing or seeing the attack on their colleagues and either coming to help or running away. it is, of course, a game design thing to make each encounter doable, rather than having to worry about more unpedictable situations where the group size suddenly doubles (the famed "ADD!!!") or quadruples because those who ran away came back with helpers.
Games have done limited variations on this:
- D&D Online, the monsters can hear you, and specifically will hear you smash a barrel on the other side of a closed door and wake up, being ready for your attack. Sound and sight matter, though still not quite as much as desired here.
- EverQuest and other games frequently have a monster run away through other packs, hoping you will stupidly follow and aggro a second group. Most people quickly learn not to do this. Sadly, the other pack doesn't join in in this case. I guess when tearing by, the monster under attack forgot to mention his colleagues were currently under assault.
- World of Warcraft had perhaps the most egregious example, where a group of two wandering (cycling on a large path) centaur "scouts" would attack you. You could kill one then run away. Eventually the other "scout" would give up and go back. Did he do what scouts are supposed to, hightail it back to camp and warn the others? No, he just resumes his path, making a mockery of the concept of being a "scout". Uhh, thanks for scouting for us, Beaky.
It's all this "idiocracy" of design that bothers me. I want to see dynamic, world-upsetting events and invasions. I don't mean one-shot stupidities, I mean real wars. I want to see cities invaded where the vendors and trainers get attacked and slaughtered, and the players don't know where to go anymore, so they'd better fight.
Death to the sentiment, "I don't wanna participate in that, and am irritated that I can't go do something else."
Well, nowadays we have enough games to accommodate you. Let's have a new one that shakes things up. Hell, for that matter, start out with a new principle: Ban all static zones and dungeons from design, and force designers to create a dynamic, ever-changing world. No more theme park zone designs, including safe cities.
Possibly but I have to think at least some of these billionaires would say hold on, and buy a half hour block of TV that evening to have a chat with America.
If anyone doesn't understand what I said here, here it is even more brutally.
Leader: This guy is uppity. Go hassle him. Trump up something.
Lackey: Got it, boss!
(later)
Lackey: Where were you last night?
Citizen, who was at a political meeting: I refuse to answer.
Lackey: You are under arrest.
Does the OP finally understand?
> I have had a 1080p 30fps dash cam with wide-angle lens, sound...
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you can see where the fraudulent accident "victim" deliberately heaves himself onto the hood. Listen to the thump, which is also incredibly soft. Listen carefully and try to ignore the foreground audio where the driver is singing along "I just met you, this is crazy, JLaw, feed me your pussy maybe..."
This. That's the scenario.
Sir, your gf was murdered last night. Where were you?
I refuse to answer.
You have just committed a crime. Also, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, his very refusal should be considered, by you, as implicit evidence of guilt.
That last part was a change England made some years back, over the objections of many.
If this issue really concerns you, perhaps you should read why it was added to the Constitution along with other rihts, which were also abused by those in power to remain in power.
Sir, you were at a political meeting last night. What were you doing there?
By tying the analysis to common criminality instead of the real motivation, government abuse of power to maintain its power, OP.demonstrates world-class, full-on, all-caps FAILURE OF IGNORANCE CLASS 1, 2, 3, 4, AND 5-719.
Consider what a G. Gordon Liddy partisan type would do with the secret, acknowledged pipeline from AT&T into that NSA room. Oh, he'd dutifully track terrorists...but hey, he can listen in to political opponents , who's to know? Report back in closed-room meetings, who's to know?
If you don't know who G. Gordon Liddy is, perhaps you know The Comedian, who's based on him, whose motivation to support the President goes beyond gray areas and a willingness to get his hands dirty into outright criminality.
Apparently it's lost on most people, what we would call the Fundamemtal Theorem of America, that we forbid, in a Constitutional way, some powers from government in their entirety.
Regardless of any beneficial use, they will be misused by those in power to remain in power.
Proof: All of human history
The solution: Blanket forbiddng of said powers completely. Then it can't eventually be misused.
And those powers that are granted have many checks and balances circumscribing their use. Removal of court, even secret court, oversight violates this Fundamental Theorem.
> Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
This, by the way, and probably deliberately, is the textbook definition of neurosis.
You paid to rent the software, same as renting a hotel room. Why should you be able to resell the hotel room?
"New neurons -- it's learning! What's it saying? Shhhhh!"
"The only winning move is not to play."
There is no oversight for the warrantless stuff. That was the big scam. Previously they could, in an emergency, eavesdrop and get permission from the FISA court later (which sometimes would be denied, even Clinton had stuff denied) but at least it was tracked and recorded for later Congressional review.
This...this is just bullshit. There is no excuse for not even have cursory court review after the fact.
When I was a CS grad student, I had a scraggly 2" beard and a big heavy winter coat. One, coincidentally, particularly frigid day I went and did what I frequently did, go stand for hours in the bookstore looking thru many books.
One of the young male workers, bless his soul, had seen me off and on over those hours, and said to me, "It sure is cold outside today, isn't it, sir?"
I am not a bum. I am a grad student.
> "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmerappears to be planning a major reorganization"
I'm going to guess he's going to reorganize everyone except the guy who decided on "let others innovate then play me too-ism" as a business model.
I used to work for an Indian guy whose wife was a gorgeous, full-lipped woman from the aristocracy, and who "had the tastes of a man", as evidenced by several receptionists who rejected her advances.
I often imagined if I were a sweet, young "untouchable" maid working for her back in India. "I'm no old-school prude," she'd say to me after I'd finished changing her sheets. "I'll touch you. Just lay down right here," as she patted the comforter next to her.
"I don't...this is wrong."
"It's OK. You like this job, it's much better than what you were doing in the slums, right?"
"I ...yes. It's very nice here, ma'am." I said, as I lay back then pushed myself further up the bed with my feet. I closed my eyes, but felt my tight clothes loosening as her hads did things which made soft sounds. My tummy filled with dreadful butterflies...
Because some people who scored high on the math actually deserve to be there.
I forgot other choice stories near the top:
- Lenovo, a Chinese company, formerly the PC division of US company IBM, opens factory in old empire.
- Government orders Verizon to turn over phone records of everyone.
And now, a small play.
Lackey: What do you mean, "everyone"?
Gary Oldman: Everyone!
The revitalization is a chimera -- a coat of paint thrown on shit at the expense of other trade elsewhere.
And when China is the only one inventing medical cures anymore, what good your proud coat of paint?