I really don't understand the use of an American colony. I'm all for Asia, Africa and the Indies, but America? What's there that's useful? I can see it as a shorter route to the Indies, but it's not very close to Europe and I don't think we want to do Africa quite yet. It's also a heck of a lot less hospitable than Asia, and takes more time to get to (assuming in situ ship building in Gibraltar). As far as I can tell, the only useful things in America is tobacco, safe haven for religous zealots, lots of sunlight, and a nice spot for singles(ie dark-skinned natives). Oh, and many (but not all) of the raw materials for things like timber and furs. And some oil, but no one really knows if that's useful or not. Anyone care to fill me in? I know it's wicked cool and all, but lets do Asia!
isn't the nintendo online service free? fair trade off, I think. for the price of an xbox live gold sub. I can get five or ten classic gaming guilt free. While with microsoft I pay fifty dollars and have to pay for the classic games anyway. Well my friend, when the world gives you lemonade, you must complain it's not champagne . . .
No, the more companies continue to blindly pursue 'innovation' instead of the 'bottom line' the more their investors will shed their investments in 'risk taking' companies. HP is in a terrible position, losing market share in it's research, server and desktop divisions. It's overpriced printer cartridge division is carrying the company now. Frankly, selling most of it's patent portfolio, shaving off it's server and desktop divisions and becoming an printer, camera and ink seller (in other words being more of an office supply company) might actually be more healthy for the company. Let them invest some seed money in smaller business who still need to innovate to survive. Complaining about a company who is beholden to it's stock holders for pushing for the bottom line makes no sense. If I had the choice of listening to the market that rewards my efficency, or random folk who bemoan my lack of innovation, I'll go for the dollar signs every time. Make innovation profitable and I'm the first one knocking that door down.
In this discussion we are ignoring a simple concept of preservation of energy. He claims that particles move in discreet packets and that a discrete packet of force is used to move particles from one point to another (removing space from the equation) if we were to take that as correct and we were to assume that you could move in discrete intervals from one point to another, irrespective of this abstract 'distance' then he is correct. The problem is the ENERGY required to move at that discrete distance varies by the distance you want to travel. So you want to travel the interval of a nano meter, that requires the same amount of force from a discrete seperate particle as it does from a particle is part of your body. THe problem is moving all those particles at once which require discrete packets of energy. Now make that distance greater, and you're talking about more energy. Now it is possible to move a particle very quickly with a great amount of energy, but there is no guarantee that the particle will arrive in the condition you want it. I could move pretty fast by strapping a case of TNT to my hind quarters, but I wouldn't enjoy the ride too much. The energy required from from one point to another may be the same, but moving to a large amount of points to the one you finally reach requires a MULTIPLE of the energy required to move one particle. The amount required to reach across the planet is not trivial, and I suspect that moving across the 'Universe' would be the same. It would be impractical to amass the amount of energy reqired to move a particle from one point in the universe to another (it would take TIME) Once you used that amount of energy, you would instantly explode the partcle the energy was applied to. The only way to expend that energy in a safe way is a way we already know. Climing the stairs or taking the elevator takes the same amount of energy to move you or me from a point below to a point somewhere above it. The energy I would amass by using all that force all at once could power a light bulb for a few minutes. But if I put that same force and energy to use by kicking the lightbulb, then that energy would be used in an inefficent manner. Samething with going down the stairs. Jumping off the roof my be quicker, and use the same amount of energy as walking down the stairs, so logic would dictate that folks should just jump off of roofs. But because that much force (energy) all at once would kill someone once they applied that to the quickly appoaching ground (which is moving in a different direction, but almost certainly not one beneficial to our fragile body) we feel better taking the stairs, and expending that energy over time. Touching the ground after that last stair feels a lot better also, when we use the energy OVER TIME rather than instantly.
So no, instant travel is most likely possible, but not practical
Let me put it to you this way. I'm in my twenties. When I was in high school I went to a relatively affluent school. Back then a state of the art computer would cost you several thousand dollars. BBS were all the rage, but you needed a seperate phone line to stop the parents from nagging you. You needed to pay for a modem, a computer and hard disk space to accomodate all the cool stuff you were downloading. My friend (middle class) got a computer that cost 4000. A 486Dx2 with 16megs of ram and windows 3.1 We had to slow down Wing Commander on it it was so fast. Now this was a pretty affluent middle school, and I could count on my fingers the number of kids who had and needed computers. We were geeks. Now try to imagine a public school with no funds and parents with even less. Is there time to take programming classes? Do you think you could hop on the public transportation to get to your friends' house to play the latest game and figure out how to hack your dad's passwords? Do you even know what a modem is?
There are less minority programmers, because of less access to technology. Plain and simple. With more access to technology we'll start seeing more diverse technological development environments. This can only improve the industry in ways that many cannot imagine. Increasing your perspective, your ideas by a good 20-30 percent will have a tactile impact on the way we design, market and enjoy technology.
But don't think it's as simplistic as minorities being less qualified, less educated or less desirous to enter into the tech field.
I feel like Senator Palpatine when Mace Windu is about unite him with the force--No. No, No, No, No, NO!
Did you miss the whole "It'll be like jacking up to the matrix!"
You remember the winking, smiling girl? This was all supposed to be in-game! They marketed it as such. Everyone I know believed it to be so. We were waiting for the greatest console since the NES. That's what it felt like. It felt like there was a giant PS2 blowing the roof off my house while I chanted "Now, you're playing with POWER! POWER!" I was so excited for the PS2. I agonized over paying for a text book or a PS2 (i bought the textbook instead). The PS2 was going to deliver something that I had waited for all my youth--to be virtually immersed in a game so detailed and expansive that I would feel as I i walked in that world.
No. Sony lied. I don't know how to put it to you better. Sony lied terribly. They promised mana, and they served up a huge steaming pile of shit. I never bought a playstation2 because I played the first games out on the PS2 and I realized that my best friend had just been robbed of four hundred dollars for a piece of technology that didn't deliver even a fraction of it's hype. It was months before any game came out that my buddy felt he could play.
Don't fall for their lies. Don't do it again. No, No, NO! NO!
I will confess that the first console I purchased ever (at 24) was an xbox console. The playstation 1 was so ubiquitous that I never had to purchase one. I'd just drop over a friend's house and play. When I chose to buy the Xbox over the PS2, it was simply a matter of hardware. I was excited about being able to play online and didn't want to pay for each game, or purchase a broadband adapter and hard drive seperately. I was so far along in the purchasing curve that I didn't even fall for the graphics hype. I'd seen both perform and was woefully unimpressed with the graphics on the PS2. I had a slightly better opinion of the XBOX.
GameCube at this point wasn't even on the radar, as I felt they had missed the boat with their console, eschewing DVD playback, broadband AND harddrive (the DVD player was a killer, this was a time where getting a cheap DVD player would have added about 200 dollars to my entertainment bottom line).
Bout a year or so ago when GameCubes reduced their price to 100 dollars, I bought my second console. I wasn't impressed with Metroid Prime, but WindWaker blew me away. The technology, the gameplay, the graphics, I thought, eclipsed anything I'd played on the other two consoles. Then I purchased Pikmin. I loved it. My wife, who never touched an Xbox controller, played both Pikmin and Mario Party.
I didn't have a lot of cash to spend on games and so I put the Cube on hiatus, but I found myself playing my XBox and my large library of xbox games less and less. I found out long ago that the experience on XBOX live was nothing short of lackluster. I just wasn't ever turned on by the online component like I wanted to be. The nail in the coffin was the Halo2 debacle. That was one of the most disappointing gaming experiences --no, THE MOST DISSAPOINTING gaming experience that I've ever had. The story was half-baked, the graphics they promised us weren't even close to the reality, and the gameplay was simply "more of the same" I looked to salvation from Online play. I can't say that I found the online experience more compelling. I still find that Unreal Tournament was about the apex of my online gaming experience. After halo2, I decomissioned the xbox as a stand alone gaming console and turned it into a media center.
Fast forward to two months ago. I went into a used game store and bought a whole bunch of GameCUbe games. Skies of Arcadia, Animal Crossing, etc. I have to confess that these games are the most fun that I've had on all three consoles. I'm a total Cube convert. My experience with the cube has always been fun and a natural extension of my gaming preferences. Fun, easy to pick-up games with sufficent challenge to keep my interest up.
The console that I'm looking most forward to (and probably the first console I'll ever purchase at full price) will be the Revolution. Nintendo has proven itself to me this generation and I'll be the first one in line when the revolution starts.
Yes! I have it. Let me hire 25 engineers and 100 production workers. Let me hire support staff administrative staff and executive staff. Let me develop retirement accounts, health care, contracts with local and international distributors. Let me develop a product based on years of dreaming designing, redesigning and then final painstaking implementation! Oh, and let there not be any protection for my massive investment. Let me get all the way to a week until a release date. Then let a larger corporation with manufacturing plants in some labor cheap country come to market 2 weeks before me with a self described "exact duplicate of $manufacturer's product"!
That's scads better than having patents!
1. Develop a life changing prodcut with your own genius, capital and sacrifice 2. Don't patent it out of philisophical reasons. 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!
I wasn't going to reply to such horrid invective, but hey, I've a few minutes to spare.
Phrases like emtionally stunted, dull-witted, and psychologically regressive come to mind
thefreedictionary.com, along with several other sources define moron thus:
1. A stupid person; a dolt. 2. Psychology A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.
I would remind you, the folk you have such contempt for--are your colleagues. I would hesitate to intimate to the rest of the world that everyone you work with is of sub intelegence. The "everyone here is incompetent--except me" thing wears pretty old soon, and is quite amusing to outside observers.
There is a great difference in contempt because of their innate human traits like: average intelligence--
"Oh my gosh! There are folk out there with--average intelligence!"
And contempt for folk who show contempt for all others not like them. The first contempt is unproductive. An average intelligence person is average and isn't getting any smarter (although i'm convinced that a person with average intelligence could likely do 99.99 percent of the jobs on earth with some degree of success with the right amount of training and nurturing).
The second contempt could be helpful to help foster change in attitude and deliver a different perspective to such backward thinking.
Your anger itself is entertaining and just about proves my point. Such anger! Why? Read my only journal blog. It'll add about five years to your life if you follow it's advice.
I must confess. I'm writing this to get you angry again. I'm sort of devillish that way. Is your head exploding yet?
I find it amusing that you think that there is something inherently wrong with working at a fast food joint. I've done that. Did a good job. I've also worked tech support. Did that too. Did a good job. I owned my first computer about four months after I first got married about five years ago. In that time I worked in techsupport for one and a half years and then started my own tech support business. Helped pay for school and the mortgage on my house. Guess what. I realized that while I was quite good at what I did, that my real passion was not fixing other peoples networks, or selling them switches, or supporting their data centers. I got tired of getting paged in the middle of the night. I got tired of the thin margins. Mostly, I got tired of being pigeonholed into one skill.
So my new job is more interesting and I get to travel the world. Oh. During that time I was job hunting was when I worked in fast food. Helped pay the bills and I got a lot of free burgers. I also delivered mail part time. I met some of the finest most intelligent folk--hard workers who knew the pride of their job and devoted energy into perfecting thier skill. I also met folk who didn't care. I also met folk who were mean and obstinate and who showed contempt for their colleagues. I didn't understand it. Those folk were rarely successful.
Oh. Hate to burst your bubble, but geeks aren't smarter than anyone else. Just because you can refine algorithms or factor really large numbers doesn't make you inherently valuable. It is how you use the resources you have that truly defines capability. Have geeks ever ruled the world? NO. Are geeks useful? YES. Can they do amazing things? YES. Are those things somehow inherently more valuable than other things? NO. Now, there are geniuses. Not all geniuses are geeks, and not all geeks are geniuses. Worship of geeks would have landed us several ages behind the stone age. From the beginning of geekness, geeks have failed to pro
This has to be one of the most asinine comments I have ever read in my life. Let me tell you that any job that you undertake in real life will revolve around some training. If those tech support reps didn't know their job, it's most likely a problem with the training. If they can't muscle the training, it's most likely the fault of the call center for hiring folk not up to the task.
You claim that computer tech support work is work that only morons would do. I don't get you. Does that mean everyone who calls in to tech support is less than a moron?
You seem to have some disdain for folk that seem less intelligent than you. Is that not more "Getting by more on attitude and ego"?
Your contempt from your co-workers is reprehensible and will guarantee that you will not ever be sucessful working in a team or managing colleagues. I shudder to think what will happen when you (inevitably) will encounter someone who is smarter than you. I hope that person gives you more courtesy and respect than you've extended to your colleagues. If you came into my office with that attitude, I'd think considerably about your talents then ask you to wait a couple of years until you mature a bit.
You seem to think that people who WORK for their money are contemptable? These are folk who may be on welfare but are willing to hand out flyers, wash dishes or work in fast food? And you find this somehow beneath you? I would take a person who was on welfare and willing to work over a wealthy do-nothing any day.
One day you're going to find out that geeks aren't really smarter than anyone else. They are just good at certain things, like most people are good at certain things.
I suggest you read Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' it'll tell you a few things about the work ethic and how to perform even the most menial tasks with professionalism and dignity (if you can suffer the facism and fanaticism and poor economy of words).
The Constitution was NOT formed by states. Read the preamble 'WE THE PEOPLE in order to form a more PERFECT UNION" was a direct allusion to the failed articles of confederation. Under that constitution, the states would have been able to trump federal rights and secceed, being a union of states. The United States is a union of the PEOPLE. Just because an elitist group of plantation owners who happened to control both the military and government in the states decided to dissolve the union (without so much as a plebecite) doesn't mean they had the right to. elected representatives have the right to govern within the framework to which they were chosen to govern, not to dissolve that framework and still maintain authority over the people who elected them.
Here's a snappy dialogue.
Voter:"I vote for you"
Public Official: "Thanks. I dissolved your government"
Voter:"Oh, I guess you don't represent me anyomore since my governemnt doesn't exist."
Give me a break. Anyone can see that this was a dumb kid who was looking to make a quick buck. It's obvious that he didn't understand the GPL and just lifted the code.
Can't you see the hints in his writing style? Can't you understand that when you ravenous mad foaming at the mouth dogs came for him he dug in his heels and kept at it?
This kid is NOT scum. He isn't half the villian you losers make him out to be. I feel bad for him. He obviously has *some* talent. No one has suggested to him to help work on PearPC.
This kind of lynch-mob attitude disgusts me. You guys just found a small target and started on him like a pack of rabid dogs. I've no respect for that. I hope those who make such asinine comments don't represent the majority of the Free software community. Why don't you stand up to a senator?
Yeah, what this kid did was dumb. Foolish and incompotent. Maybe even criminal. But the vapid cruelty that the community has spewed on him is undeserved and disproportionate to the crime. Get your priorities straight and lets stop the witch hunt.
While I'd be inclined to agree with you on a lot of these points, what I'd add as some justification is that a lot of the features that will be included as _default_ in Tiger are not available by default in a ready-made usable form in windows. A quality photo manager, excellent chat client, a usable mail application, decent file management (the one thing all modern OS lack), dvd playback, multimedia playback suite, all these things microsoft sells as a additional product (did anyone go out and buy XP Plus)? Or you must download or buy as stand-alone anyway. So, yeah. Saves me tons of time and money by purchasing Tiger for the program suite alone, and makes the improvements worth the time, money and effort. (Where I live bandwidth is metered and capped at 2gig so I don't try all the quality free software or even quality commercial downloadable software I want). Once a year and a half I upgrade my OS for a hundred and thirty bucks. I think it's worth it. Plus, I know that if I don't upgrade, no one is slowly trying to push me out of usability of my old programs by making them imcompatible with the next version of whatever the that company decides to push.
Not only have I seen it, but I retro fitted an office with such back in the nineties. It was great. Although what I did was secure a bundle of cat 5 with some string and vacuum the string through the (flexible plastic hose) structure and pull the rest of the way. I'd have been hard pressed to pull six cat5 cables through a 1 inch diameter hose with only a vaccum. Anyway, it's not crazy. My first house doesn't have it (I didn't build it) but my next house will.
Lets do the math. Take 500 children. Board them in an exlusive school with good meals, great education and sufficent social skills. Have their parents pay for half (7500) a semester and let the government pay for the other half. Ten years later, we have CEO's Senior Programmers, Writers, Athletes, Teachers, etc. These folk pay taxes, contribute to their community and even may employ other people with less abilty. Net loss to society? Zero. That's a net gain. Boarding schools, macroeconomically are cheap.
Lets take a prison
Take 500 inmates. Lock them in a cell. Deprive them of life liberty and property. Force them to use your property and enforce living standards by violence and intimidation. Don't do anything about crime once you're in prison except more violence and intimidation. Say the state pays (conserviatvely) 11000 a year to house one inmate, guard him, feed him, provide with medical, dental care, clothes and occupational therapy. Once they get out, they are more violent than ever, or haven't been able to adjust to a demanding society. Some kill and rape for pleasure, others to get themselves back "home" in the prison. Net loss to society? You do the math.
Criminals aren't the only prisoners in prison. The warden is a prisoner. The warden may see the hole the prison is falling into, but is imprisioned by a vengeful constituent. The guards are imprisoned because the either: one must be very careful not to abuse those who abuse them, or two: become monsters themselves. A prision is a vehicle for hate. I fear for anyone who has to take care of prisoners.
Several things that will make prisons machines for change and reduce the net cost.
1. A thoughtful due process. There is no need to hastily decide how to incarcerate or put to death an accused convict. If the case is done right the first time, there is less room to appeal. This would have a two-fold consequence: Less innocent people would become anti-establishment monsters and more convictions for truly guilty folk would stick, including the heinous death penalty. That means an honest jury, an excellent defense, and an honest and FAIR judge. That means not reducing the sentence because of color, creed, sex or race. You do the crime you do the time. That also means knowing when to extend mercy to the convicted, when the sentence should fit the crime. Mandatory sentencing: not good. I could go on. Jury accountability. Judge accountability. Lawyer accountability. Prosecution accountability. Police accountability.
2. Society has to learn that hating prisoners is a useless proposition and an endless cycle. You hate convicts. You won't hire convicts. Convicts can't get jobs. Convicts commit crime to either A: make money B: get back into jail where they were assured three squares. The consequence is that you went to jail. After that, you've paid your debt to society. You need another chance.
3. Prions have to learn that they are not there to punish offenders. The punishment is loss of life liberty and property by due process. THe prisons are there to ensure that the liberty is lost. That means loss. That means no liberty. That means no external means of happiness. To take away a person's liberty, especially an american's liberty is tantamount to taking that person's life. That's how much we should value a person's liberty.
4. Once we get out of the way of acting as third party judges and executioners and handing proper sentences out, (mind you, I'm not lobbying for light sentences: I'm for the death penalty if it can be carried out justly and the burden of proof is on the state to prove that the person must die and appeals don't get exhausted because it would be inconvenient or expensive for the judicial/justice system) People can actually get out of jail feeling that they truly can have a fresh start. Once they beleive that, they'll do their best to prepare for the outside world. Say 25 percent of the people in pris
I didn't want to mention it in an already lenghty post, but here goes.
You have a commodity. You want to sell the commodity. You want to get rich. You charge a price based on scarcity. Someone pays. News gets around. More people want to make money selling the commodity. You have to decrease price.
HYDROGEN IS NOT SCARCE
The minute you start producing hydrogen and selling it at a profit is the same minute you go bankrupt.
The US doesn't need geothermic resources. It's got wind, water, nuclear, solar, natural gas, anything it wants to to start the hydrogen generating process. None of these things is overly scarce in the U.S.
Take wind for instance. Say Iceland was charging 10 dollars a barrel of hydrogen. Nebraska decides that's a pretty good industry, invests 25,000,000 in wind arrays, creates a 5,000,000,000 hydrogen plant and starts selling hydrogen for 7.00 dollars a barrel. Not only is it cheaper to transport it, nebraska can retrofit exisiting pipelines in the states to channel Hydrogen. In a matter of 5 years, a small state in the U.S. with a relatively small population outsells Iceland with room enough left to export cheap corn and wheat to our unfortunate Northern Islanders. Hydrogen is NOT LIKE OIL. You can't get rich off of selling it if you can't control the manufacturing process. Oil is controlled now by politcial borders and the labor intensive extraction process. Both of those obstacles dissapear with hydrogen. Hydrogen does not belong to any part of land, country or person. Ideally a person could produce hydrogen (a family of five by taking turns on an excercise bike hooked to a generator sustaining themselves with banana rice and the occasional fish) by his or herself. Most likely we'll have hydrogen produced like ice is produced in the states. Cept for CHEAPER because hydrogen is even more plentiful than clean, drinkable water! But I'm making this too long. Iceland won't get rich off of hydrogen. Unless they can keep expertise at a high enough level to make it cheaper to import hydrogen than to brew it in-house. I don't think that's possible. I could be wrong. But this tech has existed for years.
I don't understand: WHAT exactly will Iceland be exporting that will make all of them billionaires?
Saudi Arabia is rich not because it USES oil, but because it EXPORTS oil. Exporting hydrogen is stupid. exporting electricity is impractical. What they can export (for a limited time) is technical expertise and technology. That will only last until the quickest reverse engineer takes and improves on the process.
The United states, Canada, Russia, and other countries of that size will NEVER run out of available energy: they have a magnitude of the same resources that Iceland has. What they lack is the polictical will to bring about new processes of energy harvesting. That political will is bound to get stronger once they face the oil shortage brought on by our less developed neighbors paying higher prices for the fossil fuels and we can't afford to subsidise the oil prices anymore.
What we need to look out for are laws and regulations prohibiting private citizens from producing their own energy, or patents raising the barrier to purchasing simple fuel cell/hydrogen producing technology. As it stands, the technology is tightly controled and prohibitively expensive. The greatest fear of the 21st century will not be lack of abundance, but artificial scarcity in the form of patents and lawsuits forcing those capable of producing their own energy to purchase energy from designated suppliers.
is turning up the contrast a hack? or using 1920*1400 resolution and a maginifying glass on the centre for insta sniping? or using a lightgun to pinpoint the mouse to the enemy, friend sitting next to you with the gun(a little work and it's doable, you just run around and your frind picks up enemies).
I don't see why we're all worked up over this nuclear and co2 problem. Aren't we just putting radioactive material back where it came from? It didn't bother us when it was uranium, why when it's been processed? We get radiation everywhere. Radiation is good! The sun gives us radiation, tv's wouldn't work without radiation.
And about fossil fuels. You green guys are always complaining about the fossil fuels killing the earth. Isn't CO2 good for plants? Don't they need that? We could solve all our problems today if we just supplied the earth with enough CO2--then your vaunted rainforests would flourish (so to speak). What you greenies are doing is shooting yourselves in the foot. You take away the one thing that could save this planet from a plant disaster: CO2 producing cars and factories. Go figure. Putting political aim before science and common sense.
I think everyone needs to quit bitching about political differences and appreciate what we have
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
So. . . which one is it?
Eternal Vigilance of Freedom is not convenient or popular. That's why we've chosen to protect our freedoms under the American Constitution. Now if you're talking about quit the pandering to soundbites and blatent lies that our representaives tell us, I'm with you.
I dream of a day when Republicans and Democrats can sit down at the table of brotherhood and partake of a good helping of honesty and integrity.
What may sound like complaining to you is our right simply by being a human being. You may not be popular at parties (political or otherwise) but at least you're being true to what millions of Americans have risked life and limb to protect over the years.
Dukes of Hazzard. Rock on. I don't know what to say to the folks who are justifying their downloading the copy of any game. If you're going to steal it, why not just admit that you're a criminal?
What you say makes sense. Those who try to justify the illegality of downloading the game don't make sense. I'm sorry that so many people who are gamers feel that way. Rest assured, if your game is fun to play, those of us who believe in compensating others for their work will not forget to reward your game with our wallet.
Kenseyan economics (controlling fiscal and monetary policy) as FDR did by increasing the amount of government supplied employment was popular to many people because of the fact that they were able to work for their subsistence and feel some accomplishment to it. It restored dignity to a lot of hard working Americans who simply lost their livelyhood from the excesses of the American wealthy. Remember. This was a time where people were destroying products in order to increase the scarcity of them so they could demand a higher price. Whether there was an alternative to this public works welfare state will never be known. Like today, Americans wanted some financial stability.
Focusing on history, the Civil Rights movement was not a movement of the welfare state. This was the misguided policy of LBJ. He chose to do the politically convenient thing by supplying money on "the dole" instead of supplying less money to political activism in the inner city. This was mostly done in Chicago to help the political machine of the democrats continue uncontested. THis was also a way to help out farmers who would have had to produce less and so fall out of economy of scale. The food stamp program helps more than poor folk. It also helps 'family farms' and other corporations that depend on agricultural subsidys and outright payment. The government supplied spending is well and alive in the Industrial Military complex which receives hundreds of billions of dollars in govt. contracts each year. Govt. supplied spending can also be seen in purchasing stadiums for sports team owners (which always costs the city and the taxpayers money), tax breaks for companies who move into town on the promise of jobs, take millions of dollars in tax breaks, then move out without fulfilling their end of the agreeement. Medicine and Welfare programs take up a small percentage of American money but people still insist on demonizing everyone on it. I understand that we can't be expected to think of anyone other than ourselves: I respect that right. But we shouldn't throw up straw men just to defend our selfishness. Welfare recipients are not nor ever have come close to breaking the American bank. Giving up too much power to folks already in power always does. What America needs to guard against is abuse of power and position and not chase after those who don't even have the capacity to defend themselves.
But the last time I checked, 16 billion billion is still less than infinity
So what you're saying is that they offer absolutely no storage capacity at all. Taken from the absolute authority of all knowledge in the universe I quote:
"Universe, The
Some information to help you live in it.
1. Area: infinite.
2. Imports: none.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things from.
3. Exports: none.
See Imports.
4. Population: none.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
but you cannot have a religious fundamentalist oil baron as president and expect him to respect pure science. I would take it a step further and say that you cannot have a truly religious person be impartial, unbiased, and untainted when making any type of policy-wide science-related decision.
Yes, because religous folk are the only ones who have biased opinions about things. The truth is, all people have a biased opinion about something. Most people support the science that supports them and ignore the science that doesn't support thier view of their universe. It's part of human behavior. It's insulting to nonreligious folk to say that they don't have a value or moral system. This value and moral system is just as powerful as a religous person's just different in many ways.
eg. How many atheist believe it is ok to steal, murder? How many atheists are for peace? Did they come to this reasoning by purely scientific measures? Do they themselves form a value system that based on their environment and behavior? if they do, then they basically believe the same things that religous folks do, just with different motivation. To say that that motivation is selfless and impartial is frighteningly blind. The best that we can do is choose who we feel will best fulfil the responsibility of the office and watch him/her whatever they may or may not believe and hold them accountable when they break faith with their madate from the electorate.
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I really don't understand the use of an American colony. I'm all for Asia, Africa and the Indies, but America? What's there that's useful? I can see it as a shorter route to the Indies, but it's not very close to Europe and I don't think we want to do Africa quite yet. It's also a heck of a lot less hospitable than Asia, and takes more time to get to (assuming in situ ship building in Gibraltar). As far as I can tell, the only useful things in America is tobacco, safe haven for religous zealots, lots of sunlight, and a nice spot for singles(ie dark-skinned natives). Oh, and many (but not all) of the raw materials for things like timber and furs. And some oil, but no one really knows if that's useful or not.
Anyone care to fill me in? I know it's wicked cool and all, but lets do Asia!
isn't the nintendo online service free? fair trade off, I think. for the price of an xbox live gold sub. I can get five or ten classic gaming guilt free. While with microsoft I pay fifty dollars and have to pay for the classic games anyway. Well my friend, when the world gives you lemonade, you must complain it's not champagne . . .
No, the more companies continue to blindly pursue 'innovation' instead of the 'bottom line' the more their investors will shed their investments in 'risk taking' companies. HP is in a terrible position, losing market share in it's research, server and desktop divisions. It's overpriced printer cartridge division is carrying the company now. Frankly, selling most of it's patent portfolio, shaving off it's server and desktop divisions and becoming an printer, camera and ink seller (in other words being more of an office supply company) might actually be more healthy for the company. Let them invest some seed money in smaller business who still need to innovate to survive. Complaining about a company who is beholden to it's stock holders for pushing for the bottom line makes no sense. If I had the choice of listening to the market that rewards my efficency, or random folk who bemoan my lack of innovation, I'll go for the dollar signs every time. Make innovation profitable and I'm the first one knocking that door down.
In this discussion we are ignoring a simple concept of preservation of energy. He claims that particles move in discreet packets and that a discrete packet of force is used to move particles from one point to another (removing space from the equation) if we were to take that as correct and we were to assume that you could move in discrete intervals from one point to another, irrespective of this abstract 'distance' then he is correct. The problem is the ENERGY required to move at that discrete distance varies by the distance you want to travel. So you want to travel the interval of a nano meter, that requires the same amount of force from a discrete seperate particle as it does from a particle is part of your body. THe problem is moving all those particles at once which require discrete packets of energy. Now make that distance greater, and you're talking about more energy. Now it is possible to move a particle very quickly with a great amount of energy, but there is no guarantee that the particle will arrive in the condition you want it. I could move pretty fast by strapping a case of TNT to my hind quarters, but I wouldn't enjoy the ride too much. The energy required from from one point to another may be the same, but moving to a large amount of points to the one you finally reach requires a MULTIPLE of the energy required to move one particle. The amount required to reach across the planet is not trivial, and I suspect that moving across the 'Universe' would be the same. It would be impractical to amass the amount of energy reqired to move a particle from one point in the universe to another (it would take TIME) Once you used that amount of energy, you would instantly explode the partcle the energy was applied to. The only way to expend that energy in a safe way is a way we already know. Climing the stairs or taking the elevator takes the same amount of energy to move you or me from a point below to a point somewhere above it. The energy I would amass by using all that force all at once could power a light bulb for a few minutes. But if I put that same force and energy to use by kicking the lightbulb, then that energy would be used in an inefficent manner. Samething with going down the stairs. Jumping off the roof my be quicker, and use the same amount of energy as walking down the stairs, so logic would dictate that folks should just jump off of roofs. But because that much force (energy) all at once would kill someone once they applied that to the quickly appoaching ground (which is moving in a different direction, but almost certainly not one beneficial to our fragile body) we feel better taking the stairs, and expending that energy over time. Touching the ground after that last stair feels a lot better also, when we use the energy OVER TIME rather than instantly.
So no, instant travel is most likely possible, but not practical
Let me put it to you this way. I'm in my twenties. When I was in high school I went to a relatively affluent school. Back then a state of the art computer would cost you several thousand dollars. BBS were all the rage, but you needed a seperate phone line to stop the parents from nagging you. You needed to pay for a modem, a computer and hard disk space to accomodate all the cool stuff you were downloading. My friend (middle class) got a computer that cost 4000. A 486Dx2 with 16megs of ram and windows 3.1 We had to slow down Wing Commander on it it was so fast. Now this was a pretty affluent middle school, and I could count on my fingers the number of kids who had and needed computers. We were geeks. Now try to imagine a public school with no funds and parents with even less. Is there time to take programming classes? Do you think you could hop on the public transportation to get to your friends' house to play the latest game and figure out how to hack your dad's passwords? Do you even know what a modem is?
There are less minority programmers, because of less access to technology. Plain and simple. With more access to technology we'll start seeing more diverse technological development environments. This can only improve the industry in ways that many cannot imagine. Increasing your perspective, your ideas by a good 20-30 percent will have a tactile impact on the way we design, market and enjoy technology.
But don't think it's as simplistic as minorities being less qualified, less educated or less desirous to enter into the tech field.
I feel like Senator Palpatine when Mace Windu is about unite him with the force--No. No, No, No, No, NO!
Did you miss the whole "It'll be like jacking up to the matrix!"
You remember the winking, smiling girl? This was all supposed to be in-game! They marketed it as such. Everyone I know believed it to be so. We were waiting for the greatest console since the NES. That's what it felt like. It felt like there was a giant PS2 blowing the roof off my house while I chanted "Now, you're playing with POWER! POWER!" I was so excited for the PS2. I agonized over paying for a text book or a PS2 (i bought the textbook instead). The PS2 was going to deliver something that I had waited for all my youth--to be virtually immersed in a game so detailed and expansive that I would feel as I i walked in that world.
No. Sony lied. I don't know how to put it to you better. Sony lied terribly. They promised mana, and they served up a huge steaming pile of shit. I never bought a playstation2 because I played the first games out on the PS2 and I realized that my best friend had just been robbed of four hundred dollars for a piece of technology that didn't deliver even a fraction of it's hype. It was months before any game came out that my buddy felt he could play.
Don't fall for their lies. Don't do it again. No, No, NO! NO!
I will confess that the first console I purchased ever (at 24) was an xbox console. The playstation 1 was so ubiquitous that I never had to purchase one. I'd just drop over a friend's house and play. When I chose to buy the Xbox over the PS2, it was simply a matter of hardware. I was excited about being able to play online and didn't want to pay for each game, or purchase a broadband adapter and hard drive seperately. I was so far along in the purchasing curve that I didn't even fall for the graphics hype. I'd seen both perform and was woefully unimpressed with the graphics on the PS2. I had a slightly better opinion of the XBOX.
GameCube at this point wasn't even on the radar, as I felt they had missed the boat with their console, eschewing DVD playback, broadband AND harddrive (the DVD player was a killer, this was a time where getting a cheap DVD player would have added about 200 dollars to my entertainment bottom line).
Bout a year or so ago when GameCubes reduced their price to 100 dollars, I bought my second console. I wasn't impressed with Metroid Prime, but WindWaker blew me away. The technology, the gameplay, the graphics, I thought, eclipsed anything I'd played on the other two consoles. Then I purchased Pikmin. I loved it. My wife, who never touched an Xbox controller, played both Pikmin and Mario Party.
I didn't have a lot of cash to spend on games and so I put the Cube on hiatus, but I found myself playing my XBox and my large library of xbox games less and less. I found out long ago that the experience on XBOX live was nothing short of lackluster. I just wasn't ever turned on by the online component like I wanted to be. The nail in the coffin was the Halo2 debacle. That was one of the most disappointing gaming experiences --no, THE MOST DISSAPOINTING gaming experience that I've ever had. The story was half-baked, the graphics they promised us weren't even close to the reality, and the gameplay was simply "more of the same" I looked to salvation from Online play. I can't say that I found the online experience more compelling. I still find that Unreal Tournament was about the apex of my online gaming experience. After halo2, I decomissioned the xbox as a stand alone gaming console and turned it into a media center.
Fast forward to two months ago. I went into a used game store and bought a whole bunch of GameCUbe games. Skies of Arcadia, Animal Crossing, etc. I have to confess that these games are the most fun that I've had on all three consoles. I'm a total Cube convert. My experience with the cube has always been fun and a natural extension of my gaming preferences. Fun, easy to pick-up games with sufficent challenge to keep my interest up.
The console that I'm looking most forward to (and probably the first console I'll ever purchase at full price) will be the Revolution. Nintendo has proven itself to me this generation and I'll be the first one in line when the revolution starts.
Yes! I have it. Let me hire 25 engineers and 100 production workers. Let me hire support staff administrative staff and executive staff. Let me develop retirement accounts, health care, contracts with local and international distributors. Let me develop a product based on years of dreaming designing, redesigning and then final painstaking implementation! Oh, and let there not be any protection for my massive investment. Let me get all the way to a week until a release date. Then let a larger corporation with manufacturing plants in some labor cheap country come to market 2 weeks before me with a self described "exact duplicate of $manufacturer's product"!
That's scads better than having patents!
1. Develop a life changing prodcut with your own genius, capital and sacrifice
2. Don't patent it out of philisophical reasons.
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
I wasn't going to reply to such horrid invective, but hey, I've a few minutes to spare.
Phrases like emtionally stunted, dull-witted, and psychologically regressive come to mind
thefreedictionary.com, along with several other sources define moron thus:
1. A stupid person; a dolt.
2. Psychology A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education. The term belongs to a classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.
http:www.thefreedictionary.com/moron
I would remind you, the folk you have such contempt for--are your colleagues. I would hesitate to intimate to the rest of the world that everyone you work with is of sub intelegence. The "everyone here is incompetent--except me" thing wears pretty old soon, and is quite amusing to outside observers.
There is a great difference in contempt because of their innate human traits like: average intelligence--
"Oh my gosh! There are folk out there with--average intelligence!"
And contempt for folk who show contempt for all others not like them. The first contempt is unproductive. An average intelligence person is average and isn't getting any smarter (although i'm convinced that a person with average intelligence could likely do 99.99 percent of the jobs on earth with some degree of success with the right amount of training and nurturing).
The second contempt could be helpful to help foster change in attitude and deliver a different perspective to such backward thinking.
Your anger itself is entertaining and just about proves my point. Such anger! Why? Read my only journal blog. It'll add about five years to your life if you follow it's advice.
I must confess. I'm writing this to get you angry again. I'm sort of devillish that way. Is your head exploding yet?
I find it amusing that you think that there is something inherently wrong with working at a fast food joint. I've done that. Did a good job. I've also worked tech support. Did that too. Did a good job. I owned my first computer about four months after I first got married about five years ago. In that time I worked in techsupport for one and a half years and then started my own tech support business. Helped pay for school and the mortgage on my house. Guess what. I realized that while I was quite good at what I did, that my real passion was not fixing other peoples networks, or selling them switches, or supporting their data centers. I got tired of getting paged in the middle of the night. I got tired of the thin margins. Mostly, I got tired of being pigeonholed into one skill.
So my new job is more interesting and I get to travel the world. Oh. During that time I was job hunting was when I worked in fast food. Helped pay the bills and I got a lot of free burgers. I also delivered mail part time. I met some of the finest most intelligent folk--hard workers who knew the pride of their job and devoted energy into perfecting thier skill. I also met folk who didn't care. I also met folk who were mean and obstinate and who showed contempt for their colleagues. I didn't understand it. Those folk were rarely successful.
Oh. Hate to burst your bubble, but geeks aren't smarter than anyone else. Just because you can refine algorithms or factor really large numbers doesn't make you inherently valuable. It is how you use the resources you have that truly defines capability. Have geeks ever ruled the world? NO.
Are geeks useful? YES. Can they do amazing things? YES. Are those things somehow inherently more valuable than other things? NO. Now, there are geniuses. Not all geniuses are geeks, and not all geeks are geniuses. Worship of geeks would have landed us several ages behind the stone age. From the beginning of geekness, geeks have failed to pro
This has to be one of the most asinine comments I have ever read in my life. Let me tell you that any job that you undertake in real life will revolve around some training. If those tech support reps didn't know their job, it's most likely a problem with the training. If they can't muscle the training, it's most likely the fault of the call center for hiring folk not up to the task.
You claim that computer tech support work is work that only morons would do. I don't get you. Does that mean everyone who calls in to tech support is less than a moron?
You seem to have some disdain for folk that seem less intelligent than you. Is that not more "Getting by more on attitude and ego"?
Your contempt from your co-workers is reprehensible and will guarantee that you will not ever be sucessful working in a team or managing colleagues. I shudder to think what will happen when you (inevitably) will encounter someone who is smarter than you. I hope that person gives you more courtesy and respect than you've extended to your colleagues. If you came into my office with that attitude, I'd think considerably about your talents then ask you to wait a couple of years until you mature a bit.
You seem to think that people who WORK for their money are contemptable? These are folk who may be on welfare but are willing to hand out flyers, wash dishes or work in fast food? And you find this somehow beneath you? I would take a person who was on welfare and willing to work over a wealthy do-nothing any day.
One day you're going to find out that geeks aren't really smarter than anyone else. They are just good at certain things, like most people are good at certain things.
I suggest you read Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' it'll tell you a few things about the work ethic and how to perform even the most menial tasks with professionalism and dignity (if you can suffer the facism and fanaticism and poor economy of words).
The Constitution was NOT formed by states. Read the preamble 'WE THE PEOPLE in order to form a more PERFECT UNION" was a direct allusion to the failed articles of confederation. Under that constitution, the states would have been able to trump federal rights and secceed, being a union of states. The United States is a union of the PEOPLE. Just because an elitist group of plantation owners who happened to control both the military and government in the states decided to dissolve the union (without so much as a plebecite) doesn't mean they had the right to. elected representatives have the right to govern within the framework to which they were chosen to govern, not to dissolve that framework and still maintain authority over the people who elected them.
Here's a snappy dialogue.
Voter:"I vote for you"
Public Official: "Thanks. I dissolved your government"
Voter:"Oh, I guess you don't represent me anyomore since my governemnt doesn't exist."
public official: "shit!"
Give me a break. Anyone can see that this was a dumb kid who was looking to make a quick buck. It's obvious that he didn't understand the GPL and just lifted the code.
Can't you see the hints in his writing style? Can't you understand that when you ravenous mad foaming at the mouth dogs came for him he dug in his heels and kept at it?
This kid is NOT scum. He isn't half the villian you losers make him out to be. I feel bad for him. He obviously has *some* talent. No one has suggested to him to help work on PearPC.
This kind of lynch-mob attitude disgusts me. You guys just found a small target and started on him like a pack of rabid dogs. I've no respect for that. I hope those who make such asinine comments don't represent the majority of the Free software community. Why don't you stand up to a senator?
Yeah, what this kid did was dumb. Foolish and incompotent. Maybe even criminal. But the vapid cruelty that the community has spewed on him is undeserved and disproportionate to the crime. Get your priorities straight and lets stop the witch hunt.
Monday, Mar 10, 2014, Skynet becomes aware.
While I'd be inclined to agree with you on a lot of these points, what I'd add as some justification is that a lot of the features that will be included as _default_ in Tiger are not available by default in a ready-made usable form in windows. A quality photo manager, excellent chat client, a usable mail application, decent file management (the one thing all modern OS lack), dvd playback, multimedia playback suite, all these things microsoft sells as a additional product (did anyone go out and buy XP Plus)? Or you must download or buy as stand-alone anyway. So, yeah. Saves me tons of time and money by purchasing Tiger for the program suite alone, and makes the improvements worth the time, money and effort. (Where I live bandwidth is metered and capped at 2gig so I don't try all the quality free software or even quality commercial downloadable software I want). Once a year and a half I upgrade my OS for a hundred and thirty bucks. I think it's worth it. Plus, I know that if I don't upgrade, no one is slowly trying to push me out of usability of my old programs by making them imcompatible with the next version of whatever the that company decides to push.
Not only have I seen it, but I retro fitted an office with such back in the nineties. It was great. Although what I did was secure a bundle of cat 5 with some string and vacuum the string through the (flexible plastic hose) structure and pull the rest of the way. I'd have been hard pressed to pull six cat5 cables through a 1 inch diameter hose with only a vaccum. Anyway, it's not crazy. My first house doesn't have it (I didn't build it) but my next house will.
No, Jails are expensive.
Lets do the math.
Take 500 children. Board them in an exlusive school with good meals, great education and sufficent social skills. Have their parents pay for half (7500) a semester and let the government pay for the other half. Ten years later, we have CEO's Senior Programmers, Writers, Athletes, Teachers, etc. These folk pay taxes, contribute to their community and even may employ other people with less abilty. Net loss to society? Zero. That's a net gain. Boarding schools, macroeconomically are cheap.
Lets take a prison
Take 500 inmates. Lock them in a cell. Deprive them of life liberty and property. Force them to use your property and enforce living standards by violence and intimidation. Don't do anything about crime once you're in prison except more violence and intimidation. Say the state pays (conserviatvely) 11000 a year to house one inmate, guard him, feed him, provide with medical, dental care, clothes and occupational therapy. Once they get out, they are more violent than ever, or haven't been able to adjust to a demanding society. Some kill and rape for pleasure, others to get themselves back "home" in the prison. Net loss to society? You do the math.
Criminals aren't the only prisoners in prison. The warden is a prisoner. The warden may see the hole the prison is falling into, but is imprisioned by a vengeful constituent. The guards are imprisoned because the either: one must be very careful not to abuse those who abuse them, or two: become monsters themselves. A prision is a vehicle for hate. I fear for anyone who has to take care of prisoners.
Several things that will make prisons machines for change and reduce the net cost.
1. A thoughtful due process. There is no need to hastily decide how to incarcerate or put to death an accused convict. If the case is done right the first time, there is less room to appeal. This would have a two-fold consequence: Less innocent people would become anti-establishment monsters and more convictions for truly guilty folk would stick, including the heinous death penalty. That means an honest jury, an excellent defense, and an honest and FAIR judge. That means not reducing the sentence because of color, creed, sex or race. You do the crime you do the time. That also means knowing when to extend mercy to the convicted, when the sentence should fit the crime. Mandatory sentencing: not good. I could go on. Jury accountability. Judge accountability. Lawyer accountability. Prosecution accountability. Police accountability.
2. Society has to learn that hating prisoners is a useless proposition and an endless cycle. You hate convicts. You won't hire convicts. Convicts can't get jobs. Convicts commit crime to either A: make money B: get back into jail where they were assured three squares. The consequence is that you went to jail. After that, you've paid your debt to society. You need another chance.
3. Prions have to learn that they are not there to punish offenders. The punishment is loss of life liberty and property by due process. THe prisons are there to ensure that the liberty is lost. That means loss. That means no liberty. That means no external means of happiness. To take away a person's liberty, especially an american's liberty is tantamount to taking that person's life. That's how much we should value a person's liberty.
4. Once we get out of the way of acting as third party judges and executioners and handing proper sentences out, (mind you, I'm not lobbying for light sentences: I'm for the death penalty if it can be carried out justly and the burden of proof is on the state to prove that the person must die and appeals don't get exhausted because it would be inconvenient or expensive for the judicial/justice system) People can actually get out of jail feeling that they truly can have a fresh start. Once they beleive that, they'll do their best to prepare for the outside world. Say 25 percent of the people in pris
I didn't want to mention it in an already lenghty post, but here goes.
You have a commodity.
You want to sell the commodity.
You want to get rich.
You charge a price based on scarcity.
Someone pays.
News gets around.
More people want to make money selling the commodity.
You have to decrease price.
HYDROGEN IS NOT SCARCE
The minute you start producing hydrogen and selling it at a profit is the same minute you go bankrupt.
The US doesn't need geothermic resources. It's got wind, water, nuclear, solar, natural gas,
anything it wants to to start the hydrogen generating process. None of these things is overly scarce in the U.S.
Take wind for instance. Say Iceland was charging 10 dollars a barrel of hydrogen. Nebraska decides that's a pretty good industry, invests 25,000,000 in wind arrays, creates a 5,000,000,000 hydrogen plant and starts selling hydrogen for 7.00 dollars a barrel. Not only is it cheaper to transport it, nebraska can retrofit exisiting pipelines in the states to channel Hydrogen. In a matter of 5 years, a small state in the U.S. with a relatively small population outsells Iceland with room enough left to export cheap corn and wheat to our unfortunate Northern Islanders. Hydrogen is NOT LIKE OIL. You can't get rich off of selling it if you can't control the manufacturing process. Oil is controlled now by politcial borders and the labor intensive extraction process. Both of those obstacles dissapear with hydrogen. Hydrogen does not belong to any part of land, country or person. Ideally a person could produce hydrogen (a family of five by taking turns on an excercise bike hooked to a generator sustaining themselves with banana rice and the occasional fish) by his or herself. Most likely we'll have hydrogen produced like ice is produced in the states. Cept for CHEAPER because hydrogen is even more plentiful than clean, drinkable water!
But I'm making this too long.
Iceland won't get rich off of hydrogen. Unless they can keep expertise at a high enough level to make it cheaper to import hydrogen than to brew it in-house. I don't think that's possible. I could be wrong. But this tech has existed for years.
I don't understand: WHAT exactly will Iceland be exporting that will make all of them billionaires?
Saudi Arabia is rich not because it USES oil, but because it EXPORTS oil. Exporting hydrogen is stupid. exporting electricity is impractical. What they can export (for a limited time) is technical expertise and technology. That will only last until the quickest reverse engineer takes and improves on the process.
The United states, Canada, Russia, and other countries of that size will NEVER run out of available energy: they have a magnitude of the same resources that Iceland has. What they lack is the polictical will to bring about new processes of energy harvesting. That political will is bound to get stronger once they face the oil shortage brought on by our less developed neighbors paying higher prices for the fossil fuels and we can't afford to subsidise the oil prices anymore.
What we need to look out for are laws and regulations prohibiting private citizens from producing their own energy, or patents raising the barrier to purchasing simple fuel cell/hydrogen producing technology. As it stands, the technology is tightly controled and prohibitively expensive. The greatest fear of the 21st century will not be lack of abundance, but artificial scarcity in the form of patents and lawsuits forcing those capable of producing their own energy to purchase energy from designated suppliers.
is turning up the contrast a hack? or using 1920*1400 resolution and a maginifying glass on the centre for insta sniping? or using a lightgun to pinpoint the mouse to the enemy, friend sitting next to you with the gun(a little work and it's doable, you just run around and your frind picks up enemies).
Until your friend shoots you in the back.
I don't see why we're all worked up over this nuclear and co2 problem. Aren't we just putting radioactive material back where it came from? It didn't bother us when it was uranium, why when it's been processed? We get radiation everywhere. Radiation is good! The sun gives us radiation, tv's wouldn't work without radiation.
And about fossil fuels. You green guys are always complaining about the fossil fuels killing the earth. Isn't CO2 good for plants? Don't they need that? We could solve all our problems today if we just supplied the earth with enough CO2--then your vaunted rainforests would flourish (so to speak). What you greenies are doing is shooting yourselves in the foot. You take away the one thing that could save this planet from a plant disaster: CO2 producing cars and factories. Go figure. Putting political aim before science and common sense.
I think everyone needs to quit bitching about political differences and appreciate what we have
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty
So. . . which one is it?
Eternal Vigilance of Freedom is not convenient or popular. That's why we've chosen to protect our freedoms under the American Constitution. Now if you're talking about quit the pandering to soundbites and blatent lies that our representaives tell us, I'm with you.
I dream of a day when Republicans and Democrats can sit down at the table of brotherhood and partake of a good helping of honesty and integrity.
What may sound like complaining to you is our right simply by being a human being. You may not be popular at parties (political or otherwise) but at least you're being true to what millions of Americans have risked life and limb to protect over the years.
Dukes of Hazzard. Rock on. I don't know what to say to the folks who are justifying their downloading the copy of any game. If you're going to steal it, why not just admit that you're a criminal?
What you say makes sense. Those who try to justify the illegality of downloading the game don't make sense. I'm sorry that so many people who are gamers feel that way. Rest assured, if your game is fun to play, those of us who believe in compensating others for their work will not forget to reward your game with our wallet.
Kenseyan economics (controlling fiscal and monetary policy) as FDR did by increasing the amount of government supplied employment was popular to many people because of the fact that they were able to work for their subsistence and feel some accomplishment to it. It restored dignity to a lot of hard working Americans who simply lost their livelyhood from the excesses of the American wealthy. Remember. This was a time where people were destroying products in order to increase the scarcity of them so they could demand a higher price. Whether there was an alternative to this public works welfare state will never be known. Like today, Americans wanted some financial stability.
Focusing on history, the Civil Rights movement was not a movement of the welfare state. This was the misguided policy of LBJ. He chose to do the politically convenient thing by supplying money on "the dole" instead of supplying less money to political activism in the inner city. This was mostly done in Chicago to help the political machine of the democrats continue uncontested. THis was also a way to help out farmers who would have had to produce less and so fall out of economy of scale. The food stamp program helps more than poor folk. It also helps 'family farms' and other corporations that depend on agricultural subsidys and outright payment.
The government supplied spending is well and alive in the Industrial Military complex which receives hundreds of billions of dollars in govt. contracts each year. Govt. supplied spending can also be seen in purchasing stadiums for sports team owners (which always costs the city and the taxpayers money), tax breaks for companies who move into town on the promise of jobs, take millions of dollars in tax breaks, then move out without fulfilling their end of the agreeement. Medicine and Welfare programs take up a small percentage of American money but people still insist on demonizing everyone on it.
I understand that we can't be expected to think of anyone other than ourselves: I respect that right. But we shouldn't throw up straw men just to defend our selfishness. Welfare recipients are not nor ever have come close to breaking the American bank. Giving up too much power to folks already in power always does. What America needs to guard against is abuse of power and position and not chase after those who don't even have the capacity to defend themselves.
But the last time I checked, 16 billion billion is still less than infinity
So what you're saying is that they offer absolutely no storage capacity at all. Taken from the absolute authority of all knowledge in the universe I quote:
"Universe, The
Some information to help you live in it.
1. Area: infinite.
2. Imports: none.
It is impossible to import things into an infinite area, there being no outside to import things from.
3. Exports: none.
See Imports.
4. Population: none.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
emphasis added
http://hhgproject.org/entries/universe.html/
Extrapolate that to storage.
Or to you for that matter.
but you cannot have a religious fundamentalist oil baron as president and expect him to respect pure science. I would take it a step further and say that you cannot have a truly religious person be impartial, unbiased, and untainted when making any type of policy-wide science-related decision.
Yes, because religous folk are the only ones who have biased opinions about things. The truth is, all people have a biased opinion about something. Most people support the science that supports them and ignore the science that doesn't support thier view of their universe. It's part of human behavior. It's insulting to nonreligious folk to say that they don't have a value or moral system. This value and moral system is just as powerful as a religous person's just different in many ways.
eg. How many atheist believe it is ok to steal, murder? How many atheists are for peace? Did they come to this reasoning by purely scientific measures? Do they themselves form a value system that based on their environment and behavior? if they do, then they basically believe the same things that religous folks do, just with different motivation. To say that that motivation is selfless and impartial is frighteningly blind. The best that we can do is choose who we feel will best fulfil the responsibility of the office and watch him/her whatever they may or may not believe and hold them accountable when they break faith with their madate from the electorate.