It's certainly the future but I think calling it beta is charitable. When it works right it's great but when it fails it's about as bad as all other voice recognition systems that came before.
It works just frequently enough and well enough for you to want to rely on it and fails just often enough that you're wanting to chuck the phone out the window in frustration.
I think the worst bit is the inconsistent network connectivity. Since every bit of voice processing is done off the phone, you're dependent on a network connection and there's no telling when Siri won't be able to reach the server. So you can tell it to set an appointment and it will get that and ask you to confirm it and you say yes and it fails. Or you could be speaking to it in a loud voice and it will either wait 5 seconds after you're speaking to accept what you said for processing or it will cut you off mid-speech to process only part of your request.
I'm not denying this is the future but it will probably take another iphone version number before they get the glitches ironed out.
How does anything get produced these days, shows or movies or games? Someone has to come up with the money, then the movie gets made, then it gets distributed.
Now, ultimately that money is coming from individual people voting with their wallets. If people weren't watching Trek, there wouldn't be Trek. If kids weren't buying Pokemon cards and games, it wouldn't be made.
So, the question isn't a matter of straight economics. It's not like any of this stuff is subsidized. Entertainment is enormously popular, enormously profitable, and gatekeepers are making bank.
Distribution used to be the sticking point. You need theaters to show movies in, television networks to put tv shows on, and physical media to sell into homes. This all is very capital-intensive, costs a lot of money, and there are many barriers to entry.
The internet is fucking the traditional distribution model sideways. Video stores are as dead as Kodak, we're just watching the corpses twitching. Video game stores are in a similar bind.
So, where's the last barrier to entry? Capital. Even if you strip out the inflated salaries, graft, and Hollywood accounting in entertainment, this stuff is expensive to make. While you can shoot a Kevin Smith movie for $20k or make an Angry Birds for $250k (maybe it was $500k), you can't make a GTAIV or the Matrix for that kind of scratch. It takes money.
The technology is pretty much in place for fans to take ownership of their own IP, it's just a matter of setting the precedent. This is the next step that the gatekeepers don't want to see happen. Right now things are basically made on spec -- capital is put up and then profits are made after the product is produced.
So you get a producer who puts out a prospectus for a movie. Here's the plot, here's some storyboards. Target is $x to begin production. It's an investment with no guarantee of return. You kick in $5, you get your name in the credits. If the movie is profitable, you'll get points off it. But more likely the only payback is seeing the film made.
Once the film is released, it can be distributed on Netflix, direct download, physical media, and the books for the project will be left open for public audit. If it makes a profit, the investors can see a return.
If the movie is successful, the producer can pitch his next project and start raising money.
The internet is making the distribution costs cheap, can remove barriers of entry put up by rent seekers and other assholes who are trying to get a cut for not doing a goddamn thing but it still takes a pile of cash to make something. GTAIV was $100m but the typical AAA title on this generation is at least $30m. Even if 75% of the cost is bloat and waste and could be saved with an efficient, targeted effort, that's still a giant pile of cash.
Ah, that takes me back. I was such a pathetic nerd as a kid that I used to buy all the D&D guides and modules and read them even though I didn't have any friends to actually play it with. If there were any other kids at my school into D&D back in those early days, they certainly would never have publicly admitted it. I remember watching the movie Taps [wikipedia.org], and seeing the scene where the cadets are playing D&D and being so jealous that they had other people to play with.
Yeah. When other geeks would complain about only having their geek friends at school for company I was always like wow, I'm so jealous of your life. The only place I found fellow geeks was on the local BBS'. Yes, there were a number of us in the same area code but we didn't go to the same schools.
I can understand doing something really difficult with a lot of preparation. Bike across America? Cool. Walk across America? Cool. Crawl across America? Moonwalk across America? Walk on your hands across America? That goes beyond an interesting challenge to just bizarre.
I can understand sailing across an ocean. I can even understand doing it solo. But trying to set a record for smallest boat or rowing? That just seems like trying to push beyond difficult to stupidly dangerous.
I understand doing something for the challenge but there has to be a screw loose to do it for notoriety. Yeah, yeah, nobody will remember my name after I'm dead and she'll get her name in the history books whether she survives or not. In fact, she'll probably be remembered better if she does fail. Amelia Earhart surely owes a good deal of her current name recognition to not just how she lived but how she died. I guess if fame's that important to you, have at it.
[quote]And that's in a universe that's 15 *billion* light years across. It's a big place, with an unimaginable number of other planets. But mostly it's just a giant, empty void.[/quote]
Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city Or a village or a town for what it's worth. And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent That sits upon a planet known as Earth. And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains Which is out there spinning silently in space. And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals And also the entire human race.
It's a great big universe And we're all really puny We're just tiny little specks About the size of Mickey Rooney. It's big and black and inky And we are small and dinky It's a big universe and we're not.
And we're part of a vast interplanetary system Stretching seven hundred billion miles long. With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one That has life on it, although we could be wrong. Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids Including meteors and Halley's Comet too. And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars In a galaxy we call the Milky Way. It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other And still that's just a fraction of the way. 'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars. And still the universe extends to a place that never ends Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
YW+D : It's a great big universe And we're all really puny We're just tiny little specks About the size of Mickey Rooney. You might think that you're essential Try inconsequential It's a small world after all!
Making good movies is not the business they're in. Hollywood is about profit maximization and ego-stroking. You're not going to get a good, nutritious meal from McDonalds, either. It's got the salt and fat and sugar that pander to tastebuds and people go there by choice but it's not good for them, it's not good for America. And it's a chicken/egg argument over whether bad American tastes drive McDonald's practices or whether McDonald's practices ruined America's taste.
The studios bankroll, they do not create. If the creative types jump ship to streamers, the traditional companies have nothing to offer. Damnatraiggt the should be scared.
How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?
you fools simply do not understand capitalism
on
End Bonuses For Bankers
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Look, you have to pay top dollar for top talent. It's just that simple. People who are good at what they do don't work for free; they don't even work for cheap. Top performers would rather starve to death than be insulted with remuneration that's a penny less than what they deserve. You want the best, you better pay for it.
Conversely, everyone else loves working for bottom dollar because they're grateful to have a fucking job. I put an add in the paper and there's a hundred people lined up out the door tomorrow hungry and ready to work. Learn to make due with less. Austerity is the new prosperity. Survival is the new American Dream. You want to be paid more? Start your own goddamn company, you cocksucking hippie!
I would concur. Dawkins has good points, I like his books. But when he went up against Pastor Gay Hooker and Meth, he lost out. Dawkins came off as smug and peevish and Pastor Meth came off as the dignified adult being assaulted by the elitist.
An important thing to remember here is that these debates don't operate on logic but tone. It's like the cartoon showing what you say and what a dog hears -- the dog only gets the tone of voice. Doesn't matter what you say but how you say it.
You can use logic to persuade someone who is already questioning the dogma they were raised with but you're never going to reach someone who is a believer and lacks the ability to even question the dogma. Remember that belief without proof or in the face of contravening evidence is the highest christian virtue. Trying to tease them out with reason is like trying to pull out a live bot fly maggot -- it just clamps down harder and burrows deeper into the wound.
System A, employees work for the government: Employee gets a cut, employee union gets a cut, the business cronies of politicians don't get a cut.
System B, work all subbed out to contractors: Employees get a smaller cut, unions get no cut, business cronies make bank and the taxpayer is on the hook for a lot more money than System A. It's basically a looting of the treasury.
All you need to know is this is crony capitalism and graft. Look at who runs these companies and you'll see they're asshole buddies with the politicians calling the shots. It's all a circle-jerk of glad-handing and corruption. But you can bet the politicians who are making this shit happen will cry crocodile tears of nostalgia for small government and the businessmen who are sucking off the public teat will fund conservative media figures who inveigh against minorities on welfare and entitlement programs.
And for the record, I say all the above as someone who is a moderate Republican with a Vanderbilt MBA and has run for office once as a Republican. Stupid ideas appear to know no ideological boundaries, so why should good ones?
Your kind of Republican died out decades ago. My kind of Democrats aren't really around anymore, either. The people still exist, certainly, but they're disenfranchised. Don't have enough money to buy representation in our government.
Michael Moore made an interesting point. With the 9 clowns the Republicans are running in the race, it seems like the Republicans aren't really concerned with finding a viable candidate. If they're the party of the rich, shouldn't the rich be concerned? Unless they already have their guy on the other ticket and are happy with it. Given Obama's record of prosecuting and jailing Wall Street criminals, I'd say that we have our answer.
Legal trade causes far less trouble, clearly the best way forward is to legalise the trade and use the extra tax income to police and jail those who still engage in crime.
What are you, some kind of neo-crypto-liberal-homo-socialist or something?! Naw, us real Americans prefer our drugs the old-fashioned way, illegal and funding criminal enterprise.
Now that we've established that private individuals can hack real secrets out of the government, how fun would it be to plant false information among the nuggets of truth? Nothing outlandish like aliens and mind-control, I mean stuff that's completely plausible and realistic but you would require proof of it being real. For example, I think it would be completely awesome if they leaked something about a special group taking care of "Renegade's Kenya question." The Birthers would splooge all over themselves at that!
There are two critical problems at work here in my opinion:
The first is that "free market will decide" tends not to work on stuff with huge barriers for entry and almost universally required. A few lucky people can say "screw credit cards, I'm only going to use cash" or can live without a phone... but most don't have the option. They have to pick one provider from the available options, all of which mostly offer the same "bend over" treatment. You need legislation for this kind of stuff.
I'm completely for letting the Free Market decide. I happen to differ from my Libertarian friends in what I mean when I say that.
My idea of the Free Market is more like the Running Man, except instead of convicts being hunted down it'll be CEO's from corporations who have committed crimes against the nation. Oil spills, false charges, medicare fraud, unsafe working conditions, covering up drug failures, Wall Street banksters ruining the economy... See, they get away with this shit because there aren't consequences. The motto of the Free Market show is "There are consequences."
So the way it works is CEO's who have been accused of crimes against the nation are put on trial and the charges are read out. A lottery of their victims is selected and they form a posse known as the Free Market, hence the name of the show. Once their crimes have been listed and a defense made, the Free Market is let to decide what should happen to them. It should usually involve giving the CEO a five minute head start and hunting them from side-car motorcycles. The sidecar will be turned into a standing platform like a chariot. Each team will comprise a rider and hunter. The hunter will be equipped with blunt spears so it will take an exceptionally long time to bring the CEO to ground. As to what happens after the CEO is captured, it will be left up to the Free Market to decide.
Since when has this geek stuff done anything for us as a nation? Them egg-heads don't git'er'done line we real Murricans do, right? Y'all are bunch of book fags, yessir. After we take care of that larnin' shit, let's do sumthin' about gettin' this gubmint offa our backs! I don't need some politician burrowcrat tellin' me how t' live mah life! Ain't no way, ain't no how! S'cuse me while I check the mail. Gotta see if my disability check's in there. Don't you give me that look, ah earned this hear money!
The thing that I always wondered about with the asteroid impact theory is that we have several species of large reptiles that survived the extinction event. While I'm no scientist, I'm wondering if there might not have been some form of communicable disease that was stressing the dinosaur population beforehand that accounts for the gradual diminishing of fossils in the record and the asteroid impact might have been a coup de grace. I find it hard to imagine that sea turtles and crocadillians would survive while various marine reptiles did not -- moasaurs, plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, etc. I suppose there will be no easy answers.
Yeah but that is what I don't understand. How EXACTLY is "bring me the asses of 20 snow goats" supposed to be fun?
It's called padding. They're just covering for a lack of content.
Personally, my favorite RPG's had kick-ass stories that would perfectly stand alone in a novel. So you were essentially performing the same kinds of tasks to trigger the next story event but they felt relevant because you were unlocking new plot developments. Ferry the McGuffin of Power from Point A to Point B. Could just be a stupid delivery quest in the usual game. "Gee, thanks. Go on for next assignment." In a proper game that McGuffin means something and when you get to the destination major shit happens.
You get the same kind of listless, by the numbers bullshit in crappy movies. Look at the Star Wars prequels, it's a mad libs for shitty plot points. So you've got a prophecy. *rolls eyes* Space chinamen are blockading someone for some reason and Jedis are running around for some other reason and why is the hoody guy trying to kill them again? Oh, and their ship escapes but needs a spare part that only some stupid kid can help them get if he wins a pod race and wait a second, am I supposed to give a flying fuck about any of this fucking bullshit nonsense? Not invested in the characters, not invested in the plot, I'm ready to walk out. And then they throw in the by the numbers shitty romance subplot in the next movie -- it's a cinematic emetic.
There is a bit of a shortcoming for MMO's in that it's really hard to create a world-shaping experience for all players because it's a shared environment. But stand-alone RPG's should not suffer from that limitation. They do because they don't bother to have a story worth telling or writers who know what they're doing.
The circle thing is something Facebook really should have implemented. Right now I have LinkedIn for my professional contacts and FB for friends and acquaintances. I put nothing on there that I'd be embarrassed for the world to know because I assume there's zero security.
Google+ seems even more interested in getting all of that information aggregated and out there. There's a minority backlash against this sort of thing and I know of a few people who have opted out of social media entirely. It remains to be seen whether this will become a trend or if they'll remain a small percentage of the overall population, the same as with people who opt out of watching commercial television.
The bigger the headache the bigger the pill. Take your medicine Âcause you gonna be ill when I tell you the deal on dope.
ThereÂs more profit in pretending that weÂre stopping it, than selling it. Selling out, weÂre in for the shock of a lifetime. Stop and we might find faces in primetime. The faces of yours and mine. Over the counter, under the counter. On account a the drugs, itÂs not the drugs that drag you through the mud. ItÂs the money. It ainÂt funny.
Slashdot Mirror
It's certainly the future but I think calling it beta is charitable. When it works right it's great but when it fails it's about as bad as all other voice recognition systems that came before.
It works just frequently enough and well enough for you to want to rely on it and fails just often enough that you're wanting to chuck the phone out the window in frustration.
I think the worst bit is the inconsistent network connectivity. Since every bit of voice processing is done off the phone, you're dependent on a network connection and there's no telling when Siri won't be able to reach the server. So you can tell it to set an appointment and it will get that and ask you to confirm it and you say yes and it fails. Or you could be speaking to it in a loud voice and it will either wait 5 seconds after you're speaking to accept what you said for processing or it will cut you off mid-speech to process only part of your request.
I'm not denying this is the future but it will probably take another iphone version number before they get the glitches ironed out.
How does anything get produced these days, shows or movies or games? Someone has to come up with the money, then the movie gets made, then it gets distributed.
Now, ultimately that money is coming from individual people voting with their wallets. If people weren't watching Trek, there wouldn't be Trek. If kids weren't buying Pokemon cards and games, it wouldn't be made.
So, the question isn't a matter of straight economics. It's not like any of this stuff is subsidized. Entertainment is enormously popular, enormously profitable, and gatekeepers are making bank.
Distribution used to be the sticking point. You need theaters to show movies in, television networks to put tv shows on, and physical media to sell into homes. This all is very capital-intensive, costs a lot of money, and there are many barriers to entry.
The internet is fucking the traditional distribution model sideways. Video stores are as dead as Kodak, we're just watching the corpses twitching. Video game stores are in a similar bind.
So, where's the last barrier to entry? Capital. Even if you strip out the inflated salaries, graft, and Hollywood accounting in entertainment, this stuff is expensive to make. While you can shoot a Kevin Smith movie for $20k or make an Angry Birds for $250k (maybe it was $500k), you can't make a GTAIV or the Matrix for that kind of scratch. It takes money.
The technology is pretty much in place for fans to take ownership of their own IP, it's just a matter of setting the precedent. This is the next step that the gatekeepers don't want to see happen. Right now things are basically made on spec -- capital is put up and then profits are made after the product is produced.
So you get a producer who puts out a prospectus for a movie. Here's the plot, here's some storyboards. Target is $x to begin production. It's an investment with no guarantee of return. You kick in $5, you get your name in the credits. If the movie is profitable, you'll get points off it. But more likely the only payback is seeing the film made.
Once the film is released, it can be distributed on Netflix, direct download, physical media, and the books for the project will be left open for public audit. If it makes a profit, the investors can see a return.
If the movie is successful, the producer can pitch his next project and start raising money.
The internet is making the distribution costs cheap, can remove barriers of entry put up by rent seekers and other assholes who are trying to get a cut for not doing a goddamn thing but it still takes a pile of cash to make something. GTAIV was $100m but the typical AAA title on this generation is at least $30m. Even if 75% of the cost is bloat and waste and could be saved with an efficient, targeted effort, that's still a giant pile of cash.
Ah, that takes me back. I was such a pathetic nerd as a kid that I used to buy all the D&D guides and modules and read them even though I didn't have any friends to actually play it with. If there were any other kids at my school into D&D back in those early days, they certainly would never have publicly admitted it. I remember watching the movie Taps [wikipedia.org], and seeing the scene where the cadets are playing D&D and being so jealous that they had other people to play with.
Yeah. When other geeks would complain about only having their geek friends at school for company I was always like wow, I'm so jealous of your life. The only place I found fellow geeks was on the local BBS'. Yes, there were a number of us in the same area code but we didn't go to the same schools.
I can understand doing something really difficult with a lot of preparation. Bike across America? Cool. Walk across America? Cool. Crawl across America? Moonwalk across America? Walk on your hands across America? That goes beyond an interesting challenge to just bizarre.
I can understand sailing across an ocean. I can even understand doing it solo. But trying to set a record for smallest boat or rowing? That just seems like trying to push beyond difficult to stupidly dangerous.
I understand doing something for the challenge but there has to be a screw loose to do it for notoriety. Yeah, yeah, nobody will remember my name after I'm dead and she'll get her name in the history books whether she survives or not. In fact, she'll probably be remembered better if she does fail. Amelia Earhart surely owes a good deal of her current name recognition to not just how she lived but how she died. I guess if fame's that important to you, have at it.
If the big governments want rid of it, they will find a way.
[quote]And that's in a universe that's 15 *billion* light years across. It's a big place, with an unimaginable number of other planets. But mostly it's just a giant, empty void.[/quote]
Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it's worth.
And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.
And we're part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.
And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that's just a fraction of the way.
'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
YW+D : It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
You might think that you're essential
Try inconsequential
It's a small world after all!
Making good movies is not the business they're in. Hollywood is about profit maximization and ego-stroking. You're not going to get a good, nutritious meal from McDonalds, either. It's got the salt and fat and sugar that pander to tastebuds and people go there by choice but it's not good for them, it's not good for America. And it's a chicken/egg argument over whether bad American tastes drive McDonald's practices or whether McDonald's practices ruined America's taste.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oLto_YZIDw
The haunting Torgo theme with a techno remix. Better than DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS. For reals.
The studios bankroll, they do not create. If the creative types jump ship to streamers, the traditional companies have nothing to offer. Damnatraiggt the should be scared.
How long until they crack the unique ID generator and create viable clones of existing phones?
Look, you have to pay top dollar for top talent. It's just that simple. People who are good at what they do don't work for free; they don't even work for cheap. Top performers would rather starve to death than be insulted with remuneration that's a penny less than what they deserve. You want the best, you better pay for it.
Conversely, everyone else loves working for bottom dollar because they're grateful to have a fucking job. I put an add in the paper and there's a hundred people lined up out the door tomorrow hungry and ready to work. Learn to make due with less. Austerity is the new prosperity. Survival is the new American Dream. You want to be paid more? Start your own goddamn company, you cocksucking hippie!
Thanks, Microsoft.
I would concur. Dawkins has good points, I like his books. But when he went up against Pastor Gay Hooker and Meth, he lost out. Dawkins came off as smug and peevish and Pastor Meth came off as the dignified adult being assaulted by the elitist.
An important thing to remember here is that these debates don't operate on logic but tone. It's like the cartoon showing what you say and what a dog hears -- the dog only gets the tone of voice. Doesn't matter what you say but how you say it.
You can use logic to persuade someone who is already questioning the dogma they were raised with but you're never going to reach someone who is a believer and lacks the ability to even question the dogma. Remember that belief without proof or in the face of contravening evidence is the highest christian virtue. Trying to tease them out with reason is like trying to pull out a live bot fly maggot -- it just clamps down harder and burrows deeper into the wound.
This is all you need to know.
System A, employees work for the government: Employee gets a cut, employee union gets a cut, the business cronies of politicians don't get a cut.
System B, work all subbed out to contractors: Employees get a smaller cut, unions get no cut, business cronies make bank and the taxpayer is on the hook for a lot more money than System A. It's basically a looting of the treasury.
All you need to know is this is crony capitalism and graft. Look at who runs these companies and you'll see they're asshole buddies with the politicians calling the shots. It's all a circle-jerk of glad-handing and corruption. But you can bet the politicians who are making this shit happen will cry crocodile tears of nostalgia for small government and the businessmen who are sucking off the public teat will fund conservative media figures who inveigh against minorities on welfare and entitlement programs.
And for the record, I say all the above as someone who is a moderate Republican with a Vanderbilt MBA and has run for office once as a Republican. Stupid ideas appear to know no ideological boundaries, so why should good ones?
Your kind of Republican died out decades ago. My kind of Democrats aren't really around anymore, either. The people still exist, certainly, but they're disenfranchised. Don't have enough money to buy representation in our government.
Michael Moore made an interesting point. With the 9 clowns the Republicans are running in the race, it seems like the Republicans aren't really concerned with finding a viable candidate. If they're the party of the rich, shouldn't the rich be concerned? Unless they already have their guy on the other ticket and are happy with it. Given Obama's record of prosecuting and jailing Wall Street criminals, I'd say that we have our answer.
Legal trade causes far less trouble, clearly the best way forward is to legalise the trade and use the extra tax income to police and jail those who still engage in crime.
What are you, some kind of neo-crypto-liberal-homo-socialist or something?! Naw, us real Americans prefer our drugs the old-fashioned way, illegal and funding criminal enterprise.
Now that we've established that private individuals can hack real secrets out of the government, how fun would it be to plant false information among the nuggets of truth? Nothing outlandish like aliens and mind-control, I mean stuff that's completely plausible and realistic but you would require proof of it being real. For example, I think it would be completely awesome if they leaked something about a special group taking care of "Renegade's Kenya question." The Birthers would splooge all over themselves at that!
too many games, not enough interest.
There are two critical problems at work here in my opinion:
The first is that "free market will decide" tends not to work on stuff with huge barriers for entry and almost universally required. A few lucky people can say "screw credit cards, I'm only going to use cash" or can live without a phone ... but most don't have the option. They have to pick one provider from the available options, all of which mostly offer the same "bend over" treatment. You need legislation for this kind of stuff.
I'm completely for letting the Free Market decide. I happen to differ from my Libertarian friends in what I mean when I say that.
My idea of the Free Market is more like the Running Man, except instead of convicts being hunted down it'll be CEO's from corporations who have committed crimes against the nation. Oil spills, false charges, medicare fraud, unsafe working conditions, covering up drug failures, Wall Street banksters ruining the economy... See, they get away with this shit because there aren't consequences. The motto of the Free Market show is "There are consequences."
So the way it works is CEO's who have been accused of crimes against the nation are put on trial and the charges are read out. A lottery of their victims is selected and they form a posse known as the Free Market, hence the name of the show. Once their crimes have been listed and a defense made, the Free Market is let to decide what should happen to them. It should usually involve giving the CEO a five minute head start and hunting them from side-car motorcycles. The sidecar will be turned into a standing platform like a chariot. Each team will comprise a rider and hunter. The hunter will be equipped with blunt spears so it will take an exceptionally long time to bring the CEO to ground. As to what happens after the CEO is captured, it will be left up to the Free Market to decide.
Since when has this geek stuff done anything for us as a nation? Them egg-heads don't git'er'done line we real Murricans do, right? Y'all are bunch of book fags, yessir. After we take care of that larnin' shit, let's do sumthin' about gettin' this gubmint offa our backs! I don't need some politician burrowcrat tellin' me how t' live mah life! Ain't no way, ain't no how! S'cuse me while I check the mail. Gotta see if my disability check's in there. Don't you give me that look, ah earned this hear money!
The thing that I always wondered about with the asteroid impact theory is that we have several species of large reptiles that survived the extinction event. While I'm no scientist, I'm wondering if there might not have been some form of communicable disease that was stressing the dinosaur population beforehand that accounts for the gradual diminishing of fossils in the record and the asteroid impact might have been a coup de grace. I find it hard to imagine that sea turtles and crocadillians would survive while various marine reptiles did not -- moasaurs, plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, etc. I suppose there will be no easy answers.
Yeah but that is what I don't understand. How EXACTLY is "bring me the asses of 20 snow goats" supposed to be fun?
It's called padding. They're just covering for a lack of content.
Personally, my favorite RPG's had kick-ass stories that would perfectly stand alone in a novel. So you were essentially performing the same kinds of tasks to trigger the next story event but they felt relevant because you were unlocking new plot developments. Ferry the McGuffin of Power from Point A to Point B. Could just be a stupid delivery quest in the usual game. "Gee, thanks. Go on for next assignment." In a proper game that McGuffin means something and when you get to the destination major shit happens.
You get the same kind of listless, by the numbers bullshit in crappy movies. Look at the Star Wars prequels, it's a mad libs for shitty plot points. So you've got a prophecy. *rolls eyes* Space chinamen are blockading someone for some reason and Jedis are running around for some other reason and why is the hoody guy trying to kill them again? Oh, and their ship escapes but needs a spare part that only some stupid kid can help them get if he wins a pod race and wait a second, am I supposed to give a flying fuck about any of this fucking bullshit nonsense? Not invested in the characters, not invested in the plot, I'm ready to walk out. And then they throw in the by the numbers shitty romance subplot in the next movie -- it's a cinematic emetic.
There is a bit of a shortcoming for MMO's in that it's really hard to create a world-shaping experience for all players because it's a shared environment. But stand-alone RPG's should not suffer from that limitation. They do because they don't bother to have a story worth telling or writers who know what they're doing.
The circle thing is something Facebook really should have implemented. Right now I have LinkedIn for my professional contacts and FB for friends and acquaintances. I put nothing on there that I'd be embarrassed for the world to know because I assume there's zero security.
Google+ seems even more interested in getting all of that information aggregated and out there. There's a minority backlash against this sort of thing and I know of a few people who have opted out of social media entirely. It remains to be seen whether this will become a trend or if they'll remain a small percentage of the overall population, the same as with people who opt out of watching commercial television.
The bigger the headache the bigger the pill.
Take your medicine Âcause you gonna be ill when I tell you the deal on dope.
ThereÂs more profit in pretending that weÂre stopping it, than selling it.
Selling out, weÂre in for the shock of a lifetime.
Stop and we might find faces in primetime.
The faces of yours and mine.
Over the counter, under the counter.
On account a the drugs, itÂs not the drugs that drag you through the mud.
ItÂs the money.
It ainÂt funny.
Everyone else will start doing it too, and he'll have to go back to his day job.
You're missing the plan, man. He's going to sell people the tools to do street mining. After that, he sits back in fat city.