I hope that Nintendo takes the plunge and tells developers that they don't have to feel obligated to use motion controls. I just rented the Wii port of Okami, and you can tell that the motion controls are just tacked on, and actually hinder gameplay (out side of the ability to really brush). It often feels like a gimmick, which detracts from game-play. Hell, some of Nintendo's own franchises don't even use motion control, like SSBB, to great effect.
Well, this game is 1920x1080 which is a bit above what the Wii can output (480p?). Here's a link to some video of the game play:
Hmmm... so I won't be allowed to play it on my regular old TV? Odd, I thought both of the "Hi-def" consoles could handle regular TVs. I doubt the resolution is a problem, since around 70% of the people I know with a 360 (and the guy with the PS3) have standard televisions.
Processing power, though, may be an issue. Though I don't think the Wii is as gimpy as you make it out, it might still be an issue.
The controller is a non-issue. Of the last two big releases (Smash Bros, and Mario Kart) you had the choice between the GC controller, or the Classic controller, or the Wiimote/nunchuck. As someone else said here, there may be an aspect of some moronic thought that says you MUST use the motion sensors, which is rather stupid. Look what this idea did to the Okami port.
I really don't mind missing Streetfighter though, I never really was a fun of it. The only game I'm pissed about not having is Soul Caliber. Though what I'm really afraid of, is that the Wii will be an RPG wasteland, just like the GC before it. Why does nintendo hate RPGs so much? Why?!
I bought a Wii because I don't trust Microsoft to make a good console, and the Red Ring of Death debacle has made me even more wary. As for the PS3, I'm just not interested, too damn expensive, for not enough pay-off, that and as of now there isn't any games that really make me care about it yet. So far the Wii is a good investment, great at parties, a couple rock-solid "serious" games (No More Heroes, Metroid, Zelda). The PS2 has been doing good at keeping my RPG fixation happy, with a 10 year back-catalog of "new" games for $10-30, it makes it hard to justify hemorrhaging $400 for the next big thing.
I personally don't give a rats ass about graphics. I stopped really caring about "pretty / 1337 hardware" duo after college. I'd rather have good gameplay, and a strong plot now, which is becoming harder and harder to find, even Square has abandoned me.
I don't understand why you'd put graphics ahead of fun, as "'fun games not focused on graphics', as they say.. I had enough of that in the 80s and 90s" implies. I haven't had enough of fun games, with or without graphics, fun, to me, is the ONLY deciding factor. But then again I still play Nethack and the original Fallout for fun time to time, and am currently trying to play though the Zelda series (via VC) from beginning to end. And the graphics pimping has ALWAYS been around, remember what Genesis' selling point was? As was the PS1s. Remember drooling at the FMV in FF7? I'm not even going to get into PC games, the 90's was probably the era of pimping your computer to squeeze out every single pixel and FPS you can.
I'm not racist. I really don't have much against Mexican immigrants outside of purely economic reasons. I'd be okay with the flood of immigration if they were required to pay taxes, and had labor laws apply to them, so they are forced to compete with poor Americans on equal terms.
It isn't really racist to hold tax-paying, legal, and acculturated, citizens above un-culturated, untaxed, illegal immigrants. I'm sick of this debate being colored that way.
Actually you are probably right. A minority of Muslims do as you claim, while a minority of Hispanics do too. Sadly in the Muslims this minority is slightly larger. We listen to extremists because they are louder than the average, law abiding, somewhat apathetic, masses. And equally sadly we then classify the whole based on who is loudest.
Look at how some people here view Christans, all of them must be evolution hating, crypto-fascists wanting a theocracy. This is probably less than 10% of them in reality. For a more common issue, look at how everyone here sees the "left-right" classifications. All lefties are communists wanting to destroy our values and tax us to death, while all righties are fascists who want corporations to own us, and instill a theocracy.
Again, I never claimed it was all or nothing. Both sides of my family are still damn proud their heritage, and my grandfather and great grandfather (1st generation American) spoke German until they died. They also, of course, spoke English, and were very proud to be here. But then again they left for cultural reasons, and not purely economic ones. Never will I claim that all immigrants should be brainwashed into some pure conformity with some mythical American culture.
Assimilation is not synonymous with brainwashing, as much as some people want it to be.
I would agree with your border policy except, again, for economic reasons. If no one would hire them, or if they were forced to pay taxes at the job like the rest of us, then fine. If we didn't grant citizenship to them for breeding here, then fine. Sadly our policies are screwed up on so many levels that none of them work without fixing the rest.
What is a "right" and where do they come from? To get philosophical. I'm sick of people thinking that "rights" are some existent quality that exist in some magical, invisible, Platonic realm. Rights are things you can defend, if someone fights to remove it, then it no longer is one. The government has the right to do whatever they want, as long as no one fights back.
What exactly is "culturally American"? I mean, I can walk around just in my city and encounter a dozen different cultures. Which one is the true "American" one? Or are any of them? My city is different than your city. Presumably the culture is different, but I know that ours *has* to be the right one. The accent certainly is.:)
I didn't mean to come off as a cultural extremist, I'm not. One side of my family is German, and the other is Irish, I'm a 3rd generation American on either side, and both sides are very proud of their roots. I wouldn't expect Mexicans (or any other cultural group) to miss out on that. I'm a fan of multiculturalism, as long as there is compatibility, and a common interface between them.
The lack of commonality, to a large part, is what annoys me. Sometimes they seem down right unwilling to conform to the main culture. Conformity doesn't mean lose their culture in this case, since part of the greater American culture is based on accepting the fact that we are cultural mutts.
It really isn't an "all or nothing" argument. We are not Borg.
My main complaints against our illegal populations are the lack of common language, and the fact that they don't pay goddamn taxes, and thus are killing our schools and hospitals. I used to live in a Mexican neighborhood, and had the time of my life, I really do enjoy their culture, but they should be forced to pay the same prices as the rest of us did, and in turn they should have the same benefits we got.
And the border security battle has *everything* to do with brown people. You don't see anyone talking about building a fence along the Canadian border, do you? Illegally crossing in from Canada is as easy as crossing the street in some towns.
We're looking at a common thing among first-generation immigrants, eventually, they all assimilate, as have the Irish,
This wave of immigrations is several orders of magnitude larger than the previous waves. 50%+ of some of our southwestern cities are now hispanic, a change that has happened in the last 30 years, which also means that this wave is lasting far longer than the previous waves of immigration.
With these numbers, any immigrant group can form self-contained communities, making assimilation much less necessary.
Anyone who believes that a few chicano ethno-extremists (like the ones you mention above) point to some systematic resistance to assimilation has had a paleoconservative blowjob affecting their brain functions. Too many stupid leftists are buying into the racist fascist crap of Pat Buchanan and his Paleoconservative Neo-Nazi propaganda.
I never claimed a majority of them were in such groups, or that such groups were a threat to much of anything. I'm pointing this out to refute the parents claim that there is a universal will to assimilate, or that all of them come here for our cultural values. It was a small example, and not quite worth some strange strings of vehement ad hominem, and odd attempts at politically classifying me.
This is NOT a left/right issue, since the extremes of both political ideologies actually agree on this, albeit for different reasons. The left wants them here for fluffy humanitarian feel-good reasons, while the right wants them here for cheap labor and union breaking.
Are you crazy, or a leftist (same thing)? A large bulk of Hispanics came to the US to FLEE that sort of horror, and you want to send them back into it? This is not the 18th century you know!
I'm not a fan of the "love it or leave it" ethos, for ANY culture. If your country is broken, fix it. If you can't fix it, arm yourself, and find 100 million other dissatisfied folk to help you fix it. If every Mexican who crossed our border legally or illegally decided to fix Mexico, it damn well would be fixed by now.
Again, it has nothing to do with left or right.
I agree, I'd rather have our neighbors down south come up here, than a bunch of religious extremists. But just because Mexicans are generally more sane, doesn't mean the situation is desirable either.
You are 90% correct. I think that there are solutions that would fix the payment of services (taxes) issue, without granting legality to all of them, its called enforcing labor laws, and employer tax laws, regardless of citizen status. The illegals would be paying for services then, meaning the quality of educations, and health care go up, as do the costs to employers hiring them, taking away the incentive to hire them over citizens (along with hefty fines for violating the law). All of the unclaimed tax money goes to hospitals and border security, meaning it is a win for all concerned, except employers breaking the law.
I think there are some valid issues behind the politically correct bit, though, as a humanitarian, I really feel bad for EVERYONE in Mexico, it is the third world after all.
Before 9/11, I'd check out 100's of books on WMDs, terrorism, and rogue states a year. Not because I support them, but because I want to know about them. Is it criminal to want to know how your enemy thinks, or what threats confront you? If you read books on computer and network security, are you automatically some blackhat, evil, hacker?
10 years ago I read a book about how to disperse chemical and biological weapons AT THE LIBRARY, does this make me an aspiring terrorist? Or does it make me a concerned citizen? Can you decide? Who can? I'm guessing curious people FAR out-weigh terrorists, and thus saying that EVERYONE falls into the latter category smells like tyranny and fallacy.
What these people read were made public by a friendly government, it shouldn't be a crime, ESPECIALLY for the sake of knowledge. Am I old fashioned in thinking that foreknowledge is your friend? If we knew more about our enemies before 9/11 it never would have happened, and god knows how many people were guessing it before the fact.
In college I studied Hitler, and Lenin, and assorted other evil people, does this really make me want to emulate them?
I really dislike mindless patriotism, sometimes it smells like buyers remorse or cognitive dissonance. Sometimes its too earnest. The same with anti-patriotism, sometimes its smashing idols for the sake of smashing idols. I much prefer realism.
We are better off, in some respects, than Cuba, or Mexico, or... pick your 2nd/3rd world country of choice. Thats one of the perks of being a developed nation, over being a developing or undeveloped country. Compared more fairly, though, to other developed nations the US isn't doing too well. Sure the UK sometimes makes me feel good, but then I look at the Netherlands, Germany, and France and feel like we COULD BE DOING BETTER. As nice as we (the US) are, there are places who are doing better than us. Patriotism be damned, I'd rather have honesty and the will towards improvement.
For some reason the US takes another, opposite, track, and still thinks its the king of the world, and we should try to be the opposite of other more, or equally, successful countries. This is bizarre. I keep waiting for us to realize that we are failing before it is too late, but it seems that the worse we get, the more arrogant we get. This is why I bring up buyers remorse and cognitive dissonance.
Yes, we're not Hitler's Germany, or Stalin's Russia yet, and we might not ever get there. BUT... we can still fear the fact that we're getting closer to them. A functioning government requires vigilance and paranoia. People with rose-colored-patriotic glasses are making it worse. Our temporal government is nothing to respect, only the founding documents are worthy of our awe. If we fail to meet the requirements of our founding fathers, we fail as a country.
I live in Phoenix, which is a major illegal immigration hub.
I'm pretty neutral on the issue (which is REALLY rare here), though.
Yeah, but I suspect most Mexicans who enter the US illegally will assimilate quite fast.
There are parts of my town that look exactly like Mexico, whole stretches with nary a sign in English, with mariachi and polka music blaring, and not a single business does business in English. This doesn't seem like assimilation to me. In the colleges here we have a sanctioned club (MeCHA) based on retaking the original Mexican territories back, based on the claim of "La Raza" ("The Race"). 1 in 10 cars here have Aztec imagery on them. None of these point towards a desire to assimilation.
Unlike previous waves of American immigrants, they don't want to be American, they just want a living wage, while keeping their culture. Its more Balkanization than assimilation. During the last Mexican elections, illegal immigrants in the U.S. were allowed to vote in their homelands elections, and voted for a candidate whose platform was based on building a highway that dead-ended at the American border.
A minority of them are willing to learn English to the point of actually doing so.
Even if we offered the path to citizenship, they still wouldn't want to be culturally American. Sure, they would finally have to pay for services such as education and healthcare (and other tax-based services), but they still would want to be Mexican first, and American in income.
The problem with border security has nothing to do with Mexicans though. Its more along the lines of; "if a poor latino can walk across the border with his family undetected, what keeps a a clever terrorist from doing so with 100 pounds of explosives?"
To avoid the flamebate mod, I have nothing much against illegal immigrants, as long as they are forced to pay taxes, and live by the greater societies standards. I feel damn sorry for them, actually, since I know I'd rather not be in Mexico. My border policy would be turning them back, and handing them a book on Che Guevara (and the history of the American revolution), and a M16 with a box of ammo.
To be fair, as well, it might not be Azereus's fault, I have about 400 dead installations of Java sitting around from testing apps, so there probably is some odd conflict. I'm just scared of reinstalling since I have no idea whats going to break.
Same thing with the Mac.
I always kind of view Java apps as the result of lazy programming. Sure, cross-functionality is nice, but Java still doesn't really hold a candle to traditional methods.
Against Azureus though, it has gotten to be 90% bloat by aspiring to be the new Napster or something (Vuze). I really don't need to be prompted to download the newest Britanny Spears CD when I'm just trying to dig up a new distro, or a CD from Jamendo.
For some odd reason Azureus BSoDs Vista every single time I use it. I can have uTorrent running for 6 days without ever quite realizing I'm using it.
I know its not a one time thing either, I'm guaranteed to BSoD with a minute of opening it. This, as well, is a Java problem, since I've had Firefox (2 and 3 RC1) BSoD Vista when handling Java. Java is the only thing I've found to consistently kill Windows computers.
On my Mac is just slows the full system to a crawl.
Having had to speed up to 65 in a 55 to pass a Swift truck going 60 about a million fucking times, I have to say, *cough*bullshit*cough*. In fact, if I see a trucker in California going the 55 limit, they MUST be pulling a mobile home.
Perhaps I'm wrong on the specifics, maybe the regulator is set to 60, and not 55. Its been about 10 years since I used to ride along with my father, and he's mostly local, and short-hop now. I had two complaints about California trucking laws, both as someone in a truck, and someone in a car, restricting trucks to a lower speed limit AND to the right two lanes is daft. Especially at choke points like Needles and Blythe. Trying to merge past a lumbering line of behemoths was annoying as hell in a car, and, in a truck, it let me see just how reckless it forces drivers to be.
It depends on the trucking company of course, as well. Probably more than half of trucks, back then, didn't have regulators. Listening to CB chatter was enlightening, since the truckers know where every damn cop and speed trap is located, thus go as fast as they feel like. If a truck gets pulled over, or even sees highway patrol, guaranteed every truck in radio range knows what mile marker to slow down to the legal limit at.
I live in Lake County, California and when going between Upper Lake and Clear Lake (highway 20 between the junctions of highway 29 and highway 53) I have time and time again been stuck behind truckers doing ten or more miles under the speed limit who will happily ignore the MANY extremely broad places for them to pull over and let people pass.
Is there a grade? Even a 1% grade can be a bitch in a loaded semi. I'm not sure of the terrain. But yes, truckers are just as disposed towards being asses as the rest of the population.
Comparing trucker to Nazis might be a stretch though. They really aren't out to get you.:)
Your thinking of those vertical, high population density cities on the east coast right?
My city is 550 square miles, not counting the suburbs (around 9000 square miles, including the full metropolitan area), and has around 2000 people per square mile. Compare to New York city, with 300 or so square miles, with TWICE the population (27,282 per square mile, more and an order of magnitude larger).
Most cities in the west are huge sprawling behemoths. Even with public transportation, it still would add around an hour to the average commute, or more. Sadly, Phoenix doesn't even really have that. Our bus service is spotty, infrequent, and unreliable, and barely covers most of the central part of the city, much less the outskirts.
We also have the same problems as other cities, the closer to the city center (thus jobs) you are, you either have to cope with high prices, or nasty ghetto. The only middle-class compromise is to move further and further out, thus increasing trip times, and eliminated public transit as a viable, and timely option. Statistically, only 3% of people in Pheonix use public transit to commute, while 72% drive their own cars to work.
There is much more to the US than the east coast.
Re:inefficiency of driving too fast
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Big Rigs Go High Tech
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My father is a life long trucker, and when I was younger I went with him on several trips, learning the business.
Most trucking companies with their own trucks have regulators in them with limit the speed to California highway spec for semis(I think 55). Swift is the biggest one I can think of that does this. These companies generally charge per-hour or trip, and not per hour, which also minimizes speed. They also have pretty good safety enforcement, and trip monitoring. The ones to worry about are the independent contractors. They are paid per mile, or make money based on the speed of their delivery, thus have an incentive to speed, and be reckless. They also have far less safety and maintenance requirements than corporate drivers.
The margins in modern trucking are pretty damn slim, so sometimes people cut corners.
If you want to be afraid, just wait until the foreign trucking provisions of NAFTA come through, and we're flooded with Mexican truckers, driving Mexican trucks, completely immune to American safety, and EPA standards, much less CDL standards.
Most of my "bad trucker" experiences were due to morons in cars acting recklessly. People don't realize that trucks have a MASSIVE stopping distance, miles of blindspots, and the empty trailers REALLY suck. I see so many people change lanes 10ft in front of trucks going 75mph, thinking it is safe. Sometimes I hope that something terrible happens, just so I can feel good about Darwin.
Back when I still did the gaming/geek bling rigs, I had to up my PSU thanks to installing a RAID 0, a new video card, and something else. The first one I got died in a week. The second one would stop working about 10 seconds after boot, this started decreasing to 5 seconds, and finally it would power up and just die. Finally it powered on, got to the Windows log-on, and died. That last time it completely fried my Mobo. Never saw anything like it before.
After that I got a Mac, and decided my "hardcore" days were over.
The point wasn't that they are good because they allow him to pirate, the point was that they are good because they are liberal with bandwidth, that the parent just so happened to use to pirate.
The piracy is another debate entirely.
Another point is that what your using that bandwidth for isn't Verizon's business, it could be gigs of Linux disto's, it could be steaming video, or it could be warez and piracy. It is between you and the copyright holder, and/or law enforcement, not between you and your ISP.
But why do you want to be smarter than everyone else?/takes off hat and burns it in disgust
Personally I find knowing stuff to be a goal for its own sake. I don't like that feeling of ignorance. Not to pat your back, but your probably smarter than 70+% of the population already. Thats not really a compliment, just a general reflection on the state of society.
But the way things are going it would end up with only Window's users being the cool kids. With the OS X users being the leper colony, and all the rest being the modern equivalent of untouchables, though we might get a badly supported plug-in someday.
The school I went to had a female to male ratio of 3:1, and in some departments it went as skewed as 10:1. Also by the nature of the university (Flagstaff), almost everyone (sans freshmen) were physically fit. Wonderful place to go.
I never had a problem with the women (or at least the ones where I'd be attracted to them as well) there, even if our tastes differ (smoke, drink, atheist, though I ALSO didn't get top credit on math exams;p ), I agree with you 100%.
Though generally it took a bit more in the table discussion than just "hey, I'm smart, wanna date?"
We basically agree. Though I don't like how narrow all of these have gotten, referring ONLY to certain branches of science, math, and computers. I've always seen the the crux of the issue (as stated) being in the nearly autistic desire to fully understand, and manipulate complex systems. Thats why many people here, in one of the nerd-worthy fields, also have very complex hobbies such as brewing beer, or constructing strange devices.
My 2c psychoanalysis is that most of us needed control over something, since I doubt most of us are most athletic, or were the most "popular" kids in school. I'm probably wrong, but its 2am, so thats okay.
I think the increase in acceptance also is due to the fact that there are more geeks. Before the early-90's computers were hard to find, and prohibitively expensive to most (especially to let their kids thrash weekly for the sake of entertainment). Kids growing up in the 80's had a better chance of turning into geeks, and thus there are more of them. Experience breeds acceptance, that and the aforementioned lessening of the stigma, made more BLATANT geeks.
Slashdot Mirror
No!
I hope that Nintendo takes the plunge and tells developers that they don't have to feel obligated to use motion controls. I just rented the Wii port of Okami, and you can tell that the motion controls are just tacked on, and actually hinder gameplay (out side of the ability to really brush). It often feels like a gimmick, which detracts from game-play. Hell, some of Nintendo's own franchises don't even use motion control, like SSBB, to great effect.
Well, this game is 1920x1080 which is a bit above what the Wii can output (480p?). Here's a link to some video of the game play:
Hmmm... so I won't be allowed to play it on my regular old TV? Odd, I thought both of the "Hi-def" consoles could handle regular TVs. I doubt the resolution is a problem, since around 70% of the people I know with a 360 (and the guy with the PS3) have standard televisions.
Processing power, though, may be an issue. Though I don't think the Wii is as gimpy as you make it out, it might still be an issue.
The controller is a non-issue. Of the last two big releases (Smash Bros, and Mario Kart) you had the choice between the GC controller, or the Classic controller, or the Wiimote/nunchuck. As someone else said here, there may be an aspect of some moronic thought that says you MUST use the motion sensors, which is rather stupid. Look what this idea did to the Okami port.
I really don't mind missing Streetfighter though, I never really was a fun of it. The only game I'm pissed about not having is Soul Caliber. Though what I'm really afraid of, is that the Wii will be an RPG wasteland, just like the GC before it. Why does nintendo hate RPGs so much? Why?!
I bought a Wii because I don't trust Microsoft to make a good console, and the Red Ring of Death debacle has made me even more wary. As for the PS3, I'm just not interested, too damn expensive, for not enough pay-off, that and as of now there isn't any games that really make me care about it yet. So far the Wii is a good investment, great at parties, a couple rock-solid "serious" games (No More Heroes, Metroid, Zelda). The PS2 has been doing good at keeping my RPG fixation happy, with a 10 year back-catalog of "new" games for $10-30, it makes it hard to justify hemorrhaging $400 for the next big thing.
I personally don't give a rats ass about graphics. I stopped really caring about "pretty / 1337 hardware" duo after college. I'd rather have good gameplay, and a strong plot now, which is becoming harder and harder to find, even Square has abandoned me.
I don't understand why you'd put graphics ahead of fun, as "'fun games not focused on graphics', as they say.. I had enough of that in the 80s and 90s" implies. I haven't had enough of fun games, with or without graphics, fun, to me, is the ONLY deciding factor. But then again I still play Nethack and the original Fallout for fun time to time, and am currently trying to play though the Zelda series (via VC) from beginning to end. And the graphics pimping has ALWAYS been around, remember what Genesis' selling point was? As was the PS1s. Remember drooling at the FMV in FF7? I'm not even going to get into PC games, the 90's was probably the era of pimping your computer to squeeze out every single pixel and FPS you can.
I'm not racist. I really don't have much against Mexican immigrants outside of purely economic reasons. I'd be okay with the flood of immigration if they were required to pay taxes, and had labor laws apply to them, so they are forced to compete with poor Americans on equal terms.
It isn't really racist to hold tax-paying, legal, and acculturated, citizens above un-culturated, untaxed, illegal immigrants. I'm sick of this debate being colored that way.
Actually you are probably right. A minority of Muslims do as you claim, while a minority of Hispanics do too. Sadly in the Muslims this minority is slightly larger. We listen to extremists because they are louder than the average, law abiding, somewhat apathetic, masses. And equally sadly we then classify the whole based on who is loudest.
Look at how some people here view Christans, all of them must be evolution hating, crypto-fascists wanting a theocracy. This is probably less than 10% of them in reality. For a more common issue, look at how everyone here sees the "left-right" classifications. All lefties are communists wanting to destroy our values and tax us to death, while all righties are fascists who want corporations to own us, and instill a theocracy.
Again, I never claimed it was all or nothing. Both sides of my family are still damn proud their heritage, and my grandfather and great grandfather (1st generation American) spoke German until they died. They also, of course, spoke English, and were very proud to be here. But then again they left for cultural reasons, and not purely economic ones. Never will I claim that all immigrants should be brainwashed into some pure conformity with some mythical American culture.
Assimilation is not synonymous with brainwashing, as much as some people want it to be.
I would agree with your border policy except, again, for economic reasons. If no one would hire them, or if they were forced to pay taxes at the job like the rest of us, then fine. If we didn't grant citizenship to them for breeding here, then fine. Sadly our policies are screwed up on so many levels that none of them work without fixing the rest.
What is a "right" and where do they come from? To get philosophical. I'm sick of people thinking that "rights" are some existent quality that exist in some magical, invisible, Platonic realm. Rights are things you can defend, if someone fights to remove it, then it no longer is one. The government has the right to do whatever they want, as long as no one fights back.
Rights are not passive things.
What exactly is "culturally American"? I mean, I can walk around just in my city and encounter a dozen different cultures. Which one is the true "American" one? Or are any of them? My city is different than your city. Presumably the culture is different, but I know that ours *has* to be the right one. The accent certainly is. :)
I didn't mean to come off as a cultural extremist, I'm not. One side of my family is German, and the other is Irish, I'm a 3rd generation American on either side, and both sides are very proud of their roots. I wouldn't expect Mexicans (or any other cultural group) to miss out on that. I'm a fan of multiculturalism, as long as there is compatibility, and a common interface between them.
The lack of commonality, to a large part, is what annoys me. Sometimes they seem down right unwilling to conform to the main culture. Conformity doesn't mean lose their culture in this case, since part of the greater American culture is based on accepting the fact that we are cultural mutts.
It really isn't an "all or nothing" argument. We are not Borg.
My main complaints against our illegal populations are the lack of common language, and the fact that they don't pay goddamn taxes, and thus are killing our schools and hospitals. I used to live in a Mexican neighborhood, and had the time of my life, I really do enjoy their culture, but they should be forced to pay the same prices as the rest of us did, and in turn they should have the same benefits we got.
And the border security battle has *everything* to do with brown people. You don't see anyone talking about building a fence along the Canadian border, do you? Illegally crossing in from Canada is as easy as crossing the street in some towns.
True, but it shouldn't be.
We're looking at a common thing among first-generation immigrants, eventually, they all assimilate, as have the Irish,
This wave of immigrations is several orders of magnitude larger than the previous waves. 50%+ of some of our southwestern cities are now hispanic, a change that has happened in the last 30 years, which also means that this wave is lasting far longer than the previous waves of immigration.
With these numbers, any immigrant group can form self-contained communities, making assimilation much less necessary.
Anyone who believes that a few chicano ethno-extremists (like the ones you mention above) point to some systematic resistance to assimilation has had a paleoconservative blowjob affecting their brain functions. Too many stupid leftists are buying into the racist fascist crap of Pat Buchanan and his Paleoconservative Neo-Nazi propaganda.
I never claimed a majority of them were in such groups, or that such groups were a threat to much of anything. I'm pointing this out to refute the parents claim that there is a universal will to assimilate, or that all of them come here for our cultural values. It was a small example, and not quite worth some strange strings of vehement ad hominem, and odd attempts at politically classifying me.
This is NOT a left/right issue, since the extremes of both political ideologies actually agree on this, albeit for different reasons. The left wants them here for fluffy humanitarian feel-good reasons, while the right wants them here for cheap labor and union breaking.
Are you crazy, or a leftist (same thing)? A large bulk of Hispanics came to the US to FLEE that sort of horror, and you want to send them back into it? This is not the 18th century you know!
I'm not a fan of the "love it or leave it" ethos, for ANY culture. If your country is broken, fix it. If you can't fix it, arm yourself, and find 100 million other dissatisfied folk to help you fix it. If every Mexican who crossed our border legally or illegally decided to fix Mexico, it damn well would be fixed by now.
Again, it has nothing to do with left or right.
I agree, I'd rather have our neighbors down south come up here, than a bunch of religious extremists. But just because Mexicans are generally more sane, doesn't mean the situation is desirable either.
They call those "legal immigrants."
You are 90% correct. I think that there are solutions that would fix the payment of services (taxes) issue, without granting legality to all of them, its called enforcing labor laws, and employer tax laws, regardless of citizen status. The illegals would be paying for services then, meaning the quality of educations, and health care go up, as do the costs to employers hiring them, taking away the incentive to hire them over citizens (along with hefty fines for violating the law). All of the unclaimed tax money goes to hospitals and border security, meaning it is a win for all concerned, except employers breaking the law.
I think there are some valid issues behind the politically correct bit, though, as a humanitarian, I really feel bad for EVERYONE in Mexico, it is the third world after all.
Before 9/11, I'd check out 100's of books on WMDs, terrorism, and rogue states a year. Not because I support them, but because I want to know about them. Is it criminal to want to know how your enemy thinks, or what threats confront you? If you read books on computer and network security, are you automatically some blackhat, evil, hacker?
10 years ago I read a book about how to disperse chemical and biological weapons AT THE LIBRARY, does this make me an aspiring terrorist? Or does it make me a concerned citizen? Can you decide? Who can? I'm guessing curious people FAR out-weigh terrorists, and thus saying that EVERYONE falls into the latter category smells like tyranny and fallacy.
What these people read were made public by a friendly government, it shouldn't be a crime, ESPECIALLY for the sake of knowledge. Am I old fashioned in thinking that foreknowledge is your friend? If we knew more about our enemies before 9/11 it never would have happened, and god knows how many people were guessing it before the fact.
In college I studied Hitler, and Lenin, and assorted other evil people, does this really make me want to emulate them?
I really dislike mindless patriotism, sometimes it smells like buyers remorse or cognitive dissonance. Sometimes its too earnest. The same with anti-patriotism, sometimes its smashing idols for the sake of smashing idols. I much prefer realism.
We are better off, in some respects, than Cuba, or Mexico, or... pick your 2nd/3rd world country of choice. Thats one of the perks of being a developed nation, over being a developing or undeveloped country. Compared more fairly, though, to other developed nations the US isn't doing too well. Sure the UK sometimes makes me feel good, but then I look at the Netherlands, Germany, and France and feel like we COULD BE DOING BETTER. As nice as we (the US) are, there are places who are doing better than us. Patriotism be damned, I'd rather have honesty and the will towards improvement.
For some reason the US takes another, opposite, track, and still thinks its the king of the world, and we should try to be the opposite of other more, or equally, successful countries. This is bizarre. I keep waiting for us to realize that we are failing before it is too late, but it seems that the worse we get, the more arrogant we get. This is why I bring up buyers remorse and cognitive dissonance.
Yes, we're not Hitler's Germany, or Stalin's Russia yet, and we might not ever get there. BUT... we can still fear the fact that we're getting closer to them. A functioning government requires vigilance and paranoia. People with rose-colored-patriotic glasses are making it worse. Our temporal government is nothing to respect, only the founding documents are worthy of our awe. If we fail to meet the requirements of our founding fathers, we fail as a country.
I sound like a damn libertarian... goddamn it!
I live in Phoenix, which is a major illegal immigration hub.
I'm pretty neutral on the issue (which is REALLY rare here), though.
Yeah, but I suspect most Mexicans who enter the US illegally will assimilate quite fast.
There are parts of my town that look exactly like Mexico, whole stretches with nary a sign in English, with mariachi and polka music blaring, and not a single business does business in English. This doesn't seem like assimilation to me. In the colleges here we have a sanctioned club (MeCHA) based on retaking the original Mexican territories back, based on the claim of "La Raza" ("The Race"). 1 in 10 cars here have Aztec imagery on them. None of these point towards a desire to assimilation.
Unlike previous waves of American immigrants, they don't want to be American, they just want a living wage, while keeping their culture. Its more Balkanization than assimilation. During the last Mexican elections, illegal immigrants in the U.S. were allowed to vote in their homelands elections, and voted for a candidate whose platform was based on building a highway that dead-ended at the American border.
A minority of them are willing to learn English to the point of actually doing so.
Even if we offered the path to citizenship, they still wouldn't want to be culturally American. Sure, they would finally have to pay for services such as education and healthcare (and other tax-based services), but they still would want to be Mexican first, and American in income.
The problem with border security has nothing to do with Mexicans though. Its more along the lines of; "if a poor latino can walk across the border with his family undetected, what keeps a a clever terrorist from doing so with 100 pounds of explosives?"
To avoid the flamebate mod, I have nothing much against illegal immigrants, as long as they are forced to pay taxes, and live by the greater societies standards. I feel damn sorry for them, actually, since I know I'd rather not be in Mexico. My border policy would be turning them back, and handing them a book on Che Guevara (and the history of the American revolution), and a M16 with a box of ammo.
To be fair, as well, it might not be Azereus's fault, I have about 400 dead installations of Java sitting around from testing apps, so there probably is some odd conflict. I'm just scared of reinstalling since I have no idea whats going to break.
Same thing with the Mac.
I always kind of view Java apps as the result of lazy programming. Sure, cross-functionality is nice, but Java still doesn't really hold a candle to traditional methods.
Against Azureus though, it has gotten to be 90% bloat by aspiring to be the new Napster or something (Vuze). I really don't need to be prompted to download the newest Britanny Spears CD when I'm just trying to dig up a new distro, or a CD from Jamendo.
For some odd reason Azureus BSoDs Vista every single time I use it. I can have uTorrent running for 6 days without ever quite realizing I'm using it.
I know its not a one time thing either, I'm guaranteed to BSoD with a minute of opening it. This, as well, is a Java problem, since I've had Firefox (2 and 3 RC1) BSoD Vista when handling Java. Java is the only thing I've found to consistently kill Windows computers.
On my Mac is just slows the full system to a crawl.
correction: its dog slow BECAUSE no one uses it.
Damn chickens and their eggs, or eggs and their chickens.
My god, we're almost past 1.2 million UIDs. For some reason, this is shocking.
Then why do you guys keep moving to my state, and messing it up?
We have no beaches, we have 2 cities, the weather is NEVER mild, but yet we have an endless stream of Californians coming to to mess everything up.
Living in AZ, sometimes I wonder if Californians are like locusts, they all swarmed to CA, killed it, and now have to move on to somewhere else.
Having had to speed up to 65 in a 55 to pass a Swift truck going 60 about a million fucking times, I have to say, *cough*bullshit*cough*. In fact, if I see a trucker in California going the 55 limit, they MUST be pulling a mobile home.
:)
Perhaps I'm wrong on the specifics, maybe the regulator is set to 60, and not 55. Its been about 10 years since I used to ride along with my father, and he's mostly local, and short-hop now. I had two complaints about California trucking laws, both as someone in a truck, and someone in a car, restricting trucks to a lower speed limit AND to the right two lanes is daft. Especially at choke points like Needles and Blythe. Trying to merge past a lumbering line of behemoths was annoying as hell in a car, and, in a truck, it let me see just how reckless it forces drivers to be.
It depends on the trucking company of course, as well. Probably more than half of trucks, back then, didn't have regulators. Listening to CB chatter was enlightening, since the truckers know where every damn cop and speed trap is located, thus go as fast as they feel like. If a truck gets pulled over, or even sees highway patrol, guaranteed every truck in radio range knows what mile marker to slow down to the legal limit at.
I live in Lake County, California and when going between Upper Lake and Clear Lake (highway 20 between the junctions of highway 29 and highway 53) I have time and time again been stuck behind truckers doing ten or more miles under the speed limit who will happily ignore the MANY extremely broad places for them to pull over and let people pass.
Is there a grade? Even a 1% grade can be a bitch in a loaded semi. I'm not sure of the terrain. But yes, truckers are just as disposed towards being asses as the rest of the population.
Comparing trucker to Nazis might be a stretch though. They really aren't out to get you.
Your thinking of those vertical, high population density cities on the east coast right?
My city is 550 square miles, not counting the suburbs (around 9000 square miles, including the full metropolitan area), and has around 2000 people per square mile. Compare to New York city, with 300 or so square miles, with TWICE the population (27,282 per square mile, more and an order of magnitude larger).
Most cities in the west are huge sprawling behemoths. Even with public transportation, it still would add around an hour to the average commute, or more. Sadly, Phoenix doesn't even really have that. Our bus service is spotty, infrequent, and unreliable, and barely covers most of the central part of the city, much less the outskirts.
We also have the same problems as other cities, the closer to the city center (thus jobs) you are, you either have to cope with high prices, or nasty ghetto. The only middle-class compromise is to move further and further out, thus increasing trip times, and eliminated public transit as a viable, and timely option. Statistically, only 3% of people in Pheonix use public transit to commute, while 72% drive their own cars to work.
There is much more to the US than the east coast.
My father is a life long trucker, and when I was younger I went with him on several trips, learning the business.
Most trucking companies with their own trucks have regulators in them with limit the speed to California highway spec for semis(I think 55). Swift is the biggest one I can think of that does this. These companies generally charge per-hour or trip, and not per hour, which also minimizes speed. They also have pretty good safety enforcement, and trip monitoring. The ones to worry about are the independent contractors. They are paid per mile, or make money based on the speed of their delivery, thus have an incentive to speed, and be reckless. They also have far less safety and maintenance requirements than corporate drivers.
The margins in modern trucking are pretty damn slim, so sometimes people cut corners.
If you want to be afraid, just wait until the foreign trucking provisions of NAFTA come through, and we're flooded with Mexican truckers, driving Mexican trucks, completely immune to American safety, and EPA standards, much less CDL standards.
Most of my "bad trucker" experiences were due to morons in cars acting recklessly. People don't realize that trucks have a MASSIVE stopping distance, miles of blindspots, and the empty trailers REALLY suck. I see so many people change lanes 10ft in front of trucks going 75mph, thinking it is safe. Sometimes I hope that something terrible happens, just so I can feel good about Darwin.
Back when I still did the gaming/geek bling rigs, I had to up my PSU thanks to installing a RAID 0, a new video card, and something else. The first one I got died in a week. The second one would stop working about 10 seconds after boot, this started decreasing to 5 seconds, and finally it would power up and just die. Finally it powered on, got to the Windows log-on, and died. That last time it completely fried my Mobo. Never saw anything like it before.
After that I got a Mac, and decided my "hardcore" days were over.
The point wasn't that they are good because they allow him to pirate, the point was that they are good because they are liberal with bandwidth, that the parent just so happened to use to pirate.
The piracy is another debate entirely.
Another point is that what your using that bandwidth for isn't Verizon's business, it could be gigs of Linux disto's, it could be steaming video, or it could be warez and piracy. It is between you and the copyright holder, and/or law enforcement, not between you and your ISP.
/puts on his Dr. Phil hat
/takes off hat and burns it in disgust
But why do you want to be smarter than everyone else?
Personally I find knowing stuff to be a goal for its own sake. I don't like that feeling of ignorance. Not to pat your back, but your probably smarter than 70+% of the population already. Thats not really a compliment, just a general reflection on the state of society.
If your not American, your mileage might vary.
We really need an ISO standard for this.
But the way things are going it would end up with only Window's users being the cool kids. With the OS X users being the leper colony, and all the rest being the modern equivalent of untouchables, though we might get a badly supported plug-in someday.
The school I went to had a female to male ratio of 3:1, and in some departments it went as skewed as 10:1. Also by the nature of the university (Flagstaff), almost everyone (sans freshmen) were physically fit. Wonderful place to go.
;p ), I agree with you 100%.
I never had a problem with the women (or at least the ones where I'd be attracted to them as well) there, even if our tastes differ (smoke, drink, atheist, though I ALSO didn't get top credit on math exams
Though generally it took a bit more in the table discussion than just "hey, I'm smart, wanna date?"
And to add to it, intellectual women are hot.
Well said!
We basically agree. Though I don't like how narrow all of these have gotten, referring ONLY to certain branches of science, math, and computers. I've always seen the the crux of the issue (as stated) being in the nearly autistic desire to fully understand, and manipulate complex systems. Thats why many people here, in one of the nerd-worthy fields, also have very complex hobbies such as brewing beer, or constructing strange devices.
My 2c psychoanalysis is that most of us needed control over something, since I doubt most of us are most athletic, or were the most "popular" kids in school. I'm probably wrong, but its 2am, so thats okay.
I think the increase in acceptance also is due to the fact that there are more geeks. Before the early-90's computers were hard to find, and prohibitively expensive to most (especially to let their kids thrash weekly for the sake of entertainment). Kids growing up in the 80's had a better chance of turning into geeks, and thus there are more of them. Experience breeds acceptance, that and the aforementioned lessening of the stigma, made more BLATANT geeks.