"Yet the vast majority of Western legal systems are based on Christian principles."
This is often said, but I don't believe it stands up to any sort of scrutiny.
Just look at the 10 commandments.
There are no laws in modern western democracies regarding which god to worship.
There are no laws against carving images of things in heaven above, nor in the earth below, nor under the sea.
There are no laws against taking the name of the lord in vain.
There are very few laws to keep the sabbath holy.
There are no laws to force you to honour your father and mother.
Adultery tends not to be illegal in western countries, and we tend to get very upset when we hear about islamic countries where cheating women are put to death.
There is no law against coveting your neighbours house, wife, servants, or posessions. In fact, it's encouraged.
So the great Christian values we're left with? "don't kill. Don't steal. Don't lie in court"
Both hippies and Christians are generally sensible (or they'd be dead). Both have their moments of stupidity.
"It's harming our chakra" vs. "Don't use birth control to prevent children you won't be able to afford to feed. If you do, the sky fairy will punish you for eternity!"
Not that science ever had perfect outcomes either. Both of the above are stretches from original documentation. man-made Microwaves didn't exist when "chakra" was invented, and the command was "be fruitful and multiply", not "never prevent multiplication ever". Similarly, we've had the guy who figured since radiation was energy, drinking radium water must be good for you (until his jaw fell off)
Just because something isn't useful for you doesn't mean other people don't have a use for it.
I'd say the majority of people with money enough to buy a new lexus and still have money to spend on other things haven't lived in one place for 30 years.
Don't be an idiot. One does not buy a Lexus because they want to save money.
This will be marketed as a value-added perk, unless Toyota is run by complete idiots.
Imagine, you're driving in the city, and your car automatically points out all the most highly rated hotels, resturaunts, bars, and shops. It has some idea of the shops you go to, so when it's near similar places, it can make sure to point them out when you're in new cities. "Hey, you always visit that sushi place back home. There's a great sushi place around the corner."
Not only WOULD people pay for this service, they DO in their GPSes.
I don't know why you're either surprised or upset about it.
Your government has openly sent Canadians to Syria so they can be tortured. They've openly defended torture. They've trampled all over the fourth amendment by allowing wiretapping without a warrant. They've suspended fundamental freedoms of the legal system that have existed for centuries, such as habeas corpus. They've refused to try criminals from the war in Afghanistan in a court of law, instead forcing them to defend themselves in military tribunals where they're not allowed to see the evidence against them.
Given all this and more, it's such a small jump to the accusations being made, it's almost not worth assuming they're innocent. They've sent foreign people from friendly nations to Syria to be tortured. It's a small jump to sending citizens to be tortured. They've shown disdain for the constitution wherever it doesn't let them act like dictators, it's a small jump to openly disregarding it. They've taken away legal rights, it's a small jump to think they'd take a way a little more. They've created kangaroo courts to punish their enemies without need for due process, it's a small jump to ignoring the courts altogether.
Wait...I'm not sure if your post is satire or not...
Anyway, I'm not an idiot. Of course I stopped playing. 200/yr or so to keep up with the expansions and pay the monthly fee is enough to pay the taxes&fees on a trip abroad. Given the choice between having money to do something I want to do, and spending money to do something that feels like work, I'd have to be an obsessive compulsive to keep doing it.
I haven't played Eve, but WoW does NOT represent a good learning curve, at least for me. I played for a few day-long sessions (enough to finish any single-player game on the market, experience shows), and I found myself playing an incredibly boring game where I fought easy enemies until I became strong enough to move to the next area to fight new easy enemies ad infinitum.
I'm told that the game gets interesting when you max out your character. What sort of boring, lifeless person would I have to be to want to invest hours a day for months in a character just so I can finally see if I enjoy the game?
I might be alone in this, but WoW feels like a Sisyphean task to me. Level up, raise the level cap. Level up, raise the level cap. When it gets boring, choose a whole new class to level up!
A direct example, I played racing games for years before I learned to drive. In that time, I crashed ten million billion times with no real consequence.
Getting behind the wheel of a vehicle for the first time, I had an appreciation for the fact that they weren't perfect bastions of safety. This is something I wouldn't have learned on my own based on previous experiences. Everyone in my life is an incredibly safe driver, so I've never seen a car that's noticeably out of control as a passenger. Racing myself, I understood that the vehicles weren't bulletproof, that the things I saw in the game would kill me several times over in the real world.
Similarly, playing video games has led me to abhor violence. Having killed hundreds of thousands of virtual enemies, it's given me a view of the fragility of human life, and I'm constantly realising that if these enemies were real, they'd have thoughts and feelings and lives like me, while in the virtual reality they do not. Quite powerful.
Re:Asheron's Call already had this quest...
on
Torture in Games
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I personally believe US Americans are unable to do so, because some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and I believe that our education like such as South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here! In the U.S. should help the U.S. -- should help South Africa, should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
When I went to school, I learned MS Basic and wordperfect running on MS Dos. Before that, I learned about the Commodore 64, and how to run a variety of programs on that.
Evolve or die. Nothing you learn in early grades is going to be relevant later unless you use your brain and figure out the relevant information so you can apply it later.
Hell, the recent MS Office I learned in college is now completely obsolete thanks to the latest office.
One of the benefits of the private healthcare system is more immediate access to the system, a lack of waiting lists. Unfortunately, this is because a bunch of the people who would otherwise be in line with you can't afford to seek healing.
I'd prefer to see healthcare go one of two ways. Either give it to Ron Paul so the guy can cut all the regulation to shreds so more people can provide healthcare, people can access the information and the materials to diagnose and cure themselves, and costs can plummet thanks to the free market(I'm smart enough to know I've got strep throat and I want penicillin without a 50 dollar visit to the doctor), or socialize it so the massive costs of maintaining regulations are spread out and people who are denied care thanks to the regulations can have access to doctors regardless.
Your logic suggests that lite-speed Internet, the $7/month option which provides broadband, always-on Internet at dial-up speeds, should be used by everyone, and the $50/month high-speed option is used by nobody. In practice, almost everyone gets the more expensive package, because limited bandwidth makes the Internet a much less useful place.
And in Canada, people who don't feel like dealing with the free healthcare system routinely go to the US for paid healthcare.
I suggest you do more research into both phenomena before formulating any doomsday scenarios.
Nothing unscientific about it. I'm just another part of the equation. I've always based my purchases in part based on the type of DRM the program includes. The PoP franchise is excellent, so I've already got a reason to want to play it, and if they're going to be smart and let me actually play it instead of dealing with bullshit DRM, I'll happily pay for it.
There are good reasons to have the extra wheels, side by side seats, and enclosure that a scooter or electric bike won't give you.
I'm a huge proponent of electric bikes, but I'm a distance cyclist, and I know full well the drawbacks to biking. Is it raining? I hope you're ready to show up at work wet. Is it cold and windy? I hope you don't mind being terribly uncomfortable.
In northern communities, you could take an enclosed electric vehicle to and from work from April until November. You couldn't drag yourself onto the road on a bike during those times, especially not during a wet season. I've ridden in wet weather, the result is you need to have a set of clothes just for riding.
Add a bit of storage and a second seat, and you've got a stable vehicle, protection from the elements, transportation for you and a friend. It's more practical than a bike, for more of the year.
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Hitler was a roman catholic.
Why bother reading the rest of your "facts" if you didn't bother fact checking something that simple?
This sounds like the "No true scotsman" fallacy.
"But the pope ordered these atrocities!" "but no TRUE scotsman would do it!"
"Yet the vast majority of Western legal systems are based on Christian principles."
This is often said, but I don't believe it stands up to any sort of scrutiny.
Just look at the 10 commandments.
There are no laws in modern western democracies regarding which god to worship.
There are no laws against carving images of things in heaven above, nor in the earth below, nor under the sea.
There are no laws against taking the name of the lord in vain.
There are very few laws to keep the sabbath holy.
There are no laws to force you to honour your father and mother.
Adultery tends not to be illegal in western countries, and we tend to get very upset when we hear about islamic countries where cheating women are put to death.
There is no law against coveting your neighbours house, wife, servants, or posessions. In fact, it's encouraged.
So the great Christian values we're left with? "don't kill. Don't steal. Don't lie in court"
Our legal system appears to be 30% Christian.
Both hippies and Christians are generally sensible (or they'd be dead). Both have their moments of stupidity.
"It's harming our chakra" vs. "Don't use birth control to prevent children you won't be able to afford to feed. If you do, the sky fairy will punish you for eternity!"
Not that science ever had perfect outcomes either. Both of the above are stretches from original documentation. man-made Microwaves didn't exist when "chakra" was invented, and the command was "be fruitful and multiply", not "never prevent multiplication ever". Similarly, we've had the guy who figured since radiation was energy, drinking radium water must be good for you (until his jaw fell off)
Just because something isn't useful for you doesn't mean other people don't have a use for it.
I'd say the majority of people with money enough to buy a new lexus and still have money to spend on other things haven't lived in one place for 30 years.
Don't be an idiot. One does not buy a Lexus because they want to save money.
This will be marketed as a value-added perk, unless Toyota is run by complete idiots.
Imagine, you're driving in the city, and your car automatically points out all the most highly rated hotels, resturaunts, bars, and shops. It has some idea of the shops you go to, so when it's near similar places, it can make sure to point them out when you're in new cities. "Hey, you always visit that sushi place back home. There's a great sushi place around the corner."
Not only WOULD people pay for this service, they DO in their GPSes.
The nintendo DS doesn't natively support playing music of any kind but the stuff that comes with the game.
If you don't mind hacking systems to do things they were never meant to do, then your list becomes somewhat bigger.
I don't know why you're either surprised or upset about it.
Your government has openly sent Canadians to Syria so they can be tortured. They've openly defended torture. They've trampled all over the fourth amendment by allowing wiretapping without a warrant. They've suspended fundamental freedoms of the legal system that have existed for centuries, such as habeas corpus. They've refused to try criminals from the war in Afghanistan in a court of law, instead forcing them to defend themselves in military tribunals where they're not allowed to see the evidence against them.
Given all this and more, it's such a small jump to the accusations being made, it's almost not worth assuming they're innocent. They've sent foreign people from friendly nations to Syria to be tortured. It's a small jump to sending citizens to be tortured. They've shown disdain for the constitution wherever it doesn't let them act like dictators, it's a small jump to openly disregarding it. They've taken away legal rights, it's a small jump to think they'd take a way a little more. They've created kangaroo courts to punish their enemies without need for due process, it's a small jump to ignoring the courts altogether.
Wait...I'm not sure if your post is satire or not...
Anyway, I'm not an idiot. Of course I stopped playing. 200/yr or so to keep up with the expansions and pay the monthly fee is enough to pay the taxes&fees on a trip abroad. Given the choice between having money to do something I want to do, and spending money to do something that feels like work, I'd have to be an obsessive compulsive to keep doing it.
It takes all kinds, I guess.
I haven't played Eve, but WoW does NOT represent a good learning curve, at least for me. I played for a few day-long sessions (enough to finish any single-player game on the market, experience shows), and I found myself playing an incredibly boring game where I fought easy enemies until I became strong enough to move to the next area to fight new easy enemies ad infinitum.
I'm told that the game gets interesting when you max out your character. What sort of boring, lifeless person would I have to be to want to invest hours a day for months in a character just so I can finally see if I enjoy the game?
I might be alone in this, but WoW feels like a Sisyphean task to me. Level up, raise the level cap. Level up, raise the level cap. When it gets boring, choose a whole new class to level up!
The cake is only a lie if you have ADD.
The modern games industry came about because of the breakaway success of games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and other massive shareware hits.
None of those games had DRM or copy protection of any kind, yet managed to sell millions of copies in a much smaller market than today.
What's different now from then?
I'd argue the opposite.
A direct example, I played racing games for years before I learned to drive. In that time, I crashed ten million billion times with no real consequence.
Getting behind the wheel of a vehicle for the first time, I had an appreciation for the fact that they weren't perfect bastions of safety. This is something I wouldn't have learned on my own based on previous experiences. Everyone in my life is an incredibly safe driver, so I've never seen a car that's noticeably out of control as a passenger. Racing myself, I understood that the vehicles weren't bulletproof, that the things I saw in the game would kill me several times over in the real world.
Similarly, playing video games has led me to abhor violence. Having killed hundreds of thousands of virtual enemies, it's given me a view of the fragility of human life, and I'm constantly realising that if these enemies were real, they'd have thoughts and feelings and lives like me, while in the virtual reality they do not. Quite powerful.
You're paid not to talk to people?!
Get back to work, slacker!
I don't understand. "You can use both 32 and 64 bit apps in a good linux distro" is the sort of feedback keeping you from using linux?
A little harsh, isn't it?
I personally believe US Americans are unable to do so, because some people out there in our nation don't have maps, and I believe that our education like such as South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here! In the U.S. should help the U.S. -- should help South Africa, should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children.
Blue hair = Japanophile anime addict = loser geeky
Laptop = classical nerd = hip geeky
When I went to school, I learned MS Basic and wordperfect running on MS Dos. Before that, I learned about the Commodore 64, and how to run a variety of programs on that.
Evolve or die. Nothing you learn in early grades is going to be relevant later unless you use your brain and figure out the relevant information so you can apply it later.
Hell, the recent MS Office I learned in college is now completely obsolete thanks to the latest office.
Evolve or die.
One of the benefits of the private healthcare system is more immediate access to the system, a lack of waiting lists. Unfortunately, this is because a bunch of the people who would otherwise be in line with you can't afford to seek healing.
I'd prefer to see healthcare go one of two ways. Either give it to Ron Paul so the guy can cut all the regulation to shreds so more people can provide healthcare, people can access the information and the materials to diagnose and cure themselves, and costs can plummet thanks to the free market(I'm smart enough to know I've got strep throat and I want penicillin without a 50 dollar visit to the doctor), or socialize it so the massive costs of maintaining regulations are spread out and people who are denied care thanks to the regulations can have access to doctors regardless.
Your logic suggests that lite-speed Internet, the $7/month option which provides broadband, always-on Internet at dial-up speeds, should be used by everyone, and the $50/month high-speed option is used by nobody. In practice, almost everyone gets the more expensive package, because limited bandwidth makes the Internet a much less useful place.
And in Canada, people who don't feel like dealing with the free healthcare system routinely go to the US for paid healthcare.
I suggest you do more research into both phenomena before formulating any doomsday scenarios.
Nothing unscientific about it. I'm just another part of the equation. I've always based my purchases in part based on the type of DRM the program includes. The PoP franchise is excellent, so I've already got a reason to want to play it, and if they're going to be smart and let me actually play it instead of dealing with bullshit DRM, I'll happily pay for it.
My goal is to eliminate DRM so I can use the software I want when I want to use it.
If eliminating DRM has become an effective marketing tool, then why wouldn't I promote continuing to use that tool?
There are good reasons to have the extra wheels, side by side seats, and enclosure that a scooter or electric bike won't give you.
I'm a huge proponent of electric bikes, but I'm a distance cyclist, and I know full well the drawbacks to biking. Is it raining? I hope you're ready to show up at work wet. Is it cold and windy? I hope you don't mind being terribly uncomfortable.
In northern communities, you could take an enclosed electric vehicle to and from work from April until November. You couldn't drag yourself onto the road on a bike during those times, especially not during a wet season. I've ridden in wet weather, the result is you need to have a set of clothes just for riding.
Add a bit of storage and a second seat, and you've got a stable vehicle, protection from the elements, transportation for you and a friend. It's more practical than a bike, for more of the year.
No, this is science, and I like it.
Ubisoft is saying "We don't believe that DRM reduces our sales, but we're going to test it by releasing an a-list title without DRM."
I'm going to buy it just to reward the company for doing something intelligent.
We're talking about 4 million netbooks. I don't see the problem.