With Active SETI we might be able to find more than indirect evidence. EM waves can travel a lot faster than any spaceship we could build. For systems only 100 ly away it would take at least 200 years for a reply and there is no guarantee that they are listening in the microwave or visible spectrum. They may be so advanced that radio or laser communication would be the equivalent of trying to communicate with smoke signals. Clearly it's still a long shot, but a lot less of one than with passive SETI, which relies on getting massively lucky.
If we really wanted to we could build a galaxy-scale microwave beacon for less than the cost of a manned mission to Mars. By galaxy scale I mean targeted, directional radio pulses powerful enough to reach the galactic center. A pulsed laser would have fewer beam spread problems, but I don't think we have any lasers powerful enough to travel that distance while still being detectable.
The marketing department wasn`t responsible for the complete rewrite of the graphics driver model as well as the subsequent re architecture of DirectX.
What makes you so sure? Do you work there or something? Microsoft is most definitely a marketing driven company.
No, 64 bit xp doesn't count and has never counted. Try to find drivers for it.
All of my devices have XP x64 drivers, including some older, somewhat obscure RAID cards. I find the driver support to actually be pretty good. OTOH, one of my devices does not have driver support for Windows 7. In fact that is the main reason that I don't multiboot with Windows 7. Lack of driver support.
Windows 7 32 bit does not support more than 4 gigs and Windows XP x64 supports as much RAM as you've got. OS X and Linux also support more than 4 gigs and both are far superior to Windows 7.
SSD and trim command support
Fair enough, but you are also going to have significantly less room on that SSD of yours due to Windows 7 bloat. I believe OS X also has trim support now and it is a far superior OS even if you hate the dock as I do.
better SMP support
Noticeably better? I run a dual core CPU on XP x64 and both cores seem to operate just fine.
Supperior security for all browsers due to better DEP and other security enchancements
Again how much better is the DEP support in Windows 7? XP SP2+ also has DEP support.
Touchscreen
Riight. Now that's an important feature. Who the fuck even uses a touchscreen for a desktop OS?
multi que async with Sata and PATA drives
Whatever that is I don't think I need it. XP has full command queuing support for SATA drives.
Much better security
Fair enough. There are some real security improvements in Windows 7. Along with the trim command security is the main reason to upgrade to Win 7.
What makes you so sure Windows 9 is not going to have a tablet focused UI as well? A businessman is at the Microsoft helm now. Not a geek like Gates. So it can be expected to make decisions based purely for monetary reasons. Not for tech reasons. If a techie had been in charge of decisions by now we might have been blessed with a small, efficient MinWin kernel that operates under a user selectable choice of GUI to better compete with Linux. Instead we have moronic decisions leading to primary support for tablets first and then desktops and even laptops as an afterthought as well as one of the most bloated OSes ever created by man. Certainly nothing to be proud of from a tech perspective.
You do realize that windows 7 is not free right? What makes it so much better than XP that it is worth spending money on 7 that could be spent elsewhere? I run Windows XP x64 and I just don't see any pressing reason to 'upgrade' to 7. 7 does take up a lot more disk space and I think some of the GUI decisions are horrible enough that I pretty much have to go back to a Windows Classic theme to escape from it and non-indexed search has been dumped, and it takes up a huge amount of hard drive space compared to XP, Arch Linux, or OS X, and it's a bit of a memory hog compated to those OSes as well. But otherwise it really isn't too bad of an OS. Linux and OS X are both obviously superior, but it's not that terrible. I wish microsoft would separate the GUI from the rest of the OS though. Linux is vastly superior in that sense. I love being able to choose my own GUI style in Linux. I don't see how shoving the same GUI down everyone's throat can be considered a good thing.
In its favor Windows 7 definitely boots faster than any version of XP and it's more secure because running programs as a non-admin user is much better supported and it has the trim command for SSDs. Although I don't yet own an SSD. Ironically if you are upgrading to Windows 7 for the SSD support you will also suffer much more from the drive space bloat problem since you may only have 60 GB and Win 7 can grow to take up a significant percentage of that with its greedy WinSxS folder. The hard drive space issue can be somewhat mitigated by installing Windows 7 Embedded, which I think is a better OS overall than the standard versions of Windows 7.
There may be some other minor improvements as well. But I don't see that any of them are so great that it is worth the cost of the new OS. Aside from the money one of the biggest reasons I haven't upgraded to triple boot XP x64, Win 7 x64, and Arch Linux is that my sound card doesn't have drivers for 7, and I like my sound card. I'd have to spend hundreds of dollars to properly replace it. My sound card does have Linux drivers, strangely enough.
4a (variant). Devspeak: "The game is DRM-free because we wanted to ensure a good experience for our customers." English: "Our contract doesn't include royalties. We get paid the same regardless of how few or how many copies the game sells. Under the circumstances, DRM is just more work for us, and our bottom line isn't dependent on sales or piracy. If we had to self-publish, this shit would be loaded with StarForce or require online connections for offline play."
Only an irrational developer would spend extra money that could have lined their pockets on something that, rather than increasing sales, will decrease them. There is always going to be some nonzero number of potential customers that choose to pirate instead of purchasing because they are against DRM or just don't consider a product that you don't even really own outright worth purchasing. DRM has been proven time and again that it will not stop the free riders from just downloading the superior DRM stripped version. So all you've really done is lose some quantity of sales that you would have otherwise had. The idea that you will prevent even a single person from downloading and playing the superior DRM free version is pure delusion.
I will be helping to fund Wasteland 2 and I do see it as an investment. Not every reward has to be monetary. A donation would imply that I am not expecting any reward for myself. It would just be to help others. That is clearly not the case here. My motivation is most definitely *not* altruistic. Far from it. It is 100% purely selfish.
There is most definitely risk involved. Brian Fargo could put his 2 1/2 million in a suitcase, and disappear with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. There are no strings attached to the money. There is a huge element of trust involved and that's where the risk comes in.
If you purchase shares in a company the best case scenario is that you make some extra money. Money that you can use to buy products that already exist in the marketplace.
With kickstarter I am gambling my $100 (or whatever) with the hope that my ROI will be a game that I will enjoy playing and which would not have come into existence without thousands of people like me taking that risk. The fact that the ROI is not cash does not mean that it does not exist.
In addition to the reward of the kind of game I like to play which would never otherwise be made there is the additional benefit of voting with my dollars for more such games to be made in the future as well as for the crowdsourced patronage funding model itself which might result in projects that would also never otherwise be realized. Many artistic fields are influenced by the demand of real investors that the work appeal to as many people as possible to maximize their monetary ROI leading to a compromise of artistic integrity and, at best, mediocre works. By funding any kickstarter project, especially a high profile one, I am also voting for future projects that I might otherwise never experience. Not just computer games, but also films, novels, and music.
Comrade Members, like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting--but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.
Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.
This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the only way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation. . . or by age. . . or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large---and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.
You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous--think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.
But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about ten thousand human beings, perhaps seven thousand of voting age--and some of you were elected by slim majorities. Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out--many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels--correctly!--that it has been disenfranchised.
But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent--the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
But in writing your constitution let me invite attention the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies . . . no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation. . . no involuntary taxation. Comrades, if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your government should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the o
I don't think it is individual men who tend to have such power. Yes, money is power in a way. With enough money someone could even finance his own private army of millions of soldiers and overthrow the government itself. But that sort of thing is rare and is just the price for individual liberty.
Remember that, without the help of the government, corporations have far less power. If our government were not so corrupt then perhaps corporations might have been somewhat useful. Although I don't believe shirking responsibility and making society pay dearly for a free insurance policy was ever a good thing.
Limited liability corporations that are treated as individuals themselves are a blight on society. They are too powerful. They are the only legal entities that can approach the power of even a small government. For that reason alone they should be feared and controlled if at all possible.
I consider myself a Libertarian, but I believe that limited liability corporations should be outlawed. That's right. They should be illegal. Treated as a kind of conspiracy or a form of organized crime. No sort of limited liability should be offered by the government. That is the beginning, the root of fascism. Once government tyranny is stopped, large concentrations of power as found with megacorporations should be dealt with in some way.
In fact this process of vigilance for concentrated forms of power such as corporations is one of the better justifications for having at least a small government. Having said all that, historically governments have nearly always been the source of repression and tyranny. The sort of SciFi dystopian future where corporations have the real, direct power of governments and have their own private police forces that subjugate the populace to their will has so far been limited to fiction. That's not to say that it is not possible and that it should not be feared, but at the moment the opponent with the knife to our throats is a corrupt government. In an ideal world politicians would not accept bribes and their votes could not be purchased for any price. Obviously that is not the world we live in however, and the corporations responsible for buying these laws have to be held responsible as well. There are people at those corporations who should be hanging from lamp posts along with the politicians agreeing to take away our freedoms.
Freedom means being able to do anything you want as long as it does not affect the freedom of others to do the same. It means that the police cannot come to your home at 3 AM and drag you into a prison cell for something you posted on slashdot. It means that you are not a slave who exists only because the government allows it.
A free society is one in which people don't have to fear that everything they value, everything they have, their very lives can be taken at the whim of a government.
You can never be free from the difficulties of life. A lot of the time life just sucks. Freedom won't change that. And freedom never means the freedom to violate other people's rights. I suspect you know that, which makes me curious about your agenda.
Liberty is the opposite of slavery. It means that no government or any other powerful interest has the legal right to interfere with your life unless you have yourself already interfered with someone else's. It means as much fairness and justice as is possible in a world full of selfish, sociopathic, vicious, evil thugs whose only mission in life is to hurt and control others.
The idea that the people are the government is exactly the sort of brainwashing that serves their purposes well. No matter what they do. No matter what laws they pass that beat us down and violate our most basic rights as sentient beings. They can enslave us. They can imprison us. They can take everything we value. Our very lives. And all we will do is moan about how it is our own fault because "we are the government".
I am not the government. I don't support them in any way. I don't support the laws they pass. I didn't vote for any of the people in power. I have absolutely no responsibility for what they are doing.
In the end a civil war is the only thing that will save this country, but people will have to be willing to kill and to die and to see blood off innocent people running in the streets. For children to be obliterated before they've even had a chance to live. For all the ugliness that comes with war. Especially war against a much stronger adversary. One with nearly limitless funds and all the power of modern technology. To face an army terrifying enough to take on the greatest of the worlds governments. One that could face down China or Russia or even Japan or Germany or the UK. What can a disorganized army of volunteers do against a force as mighty as that?
just sign the petitions on EFF [eff.org] and avaaz.org [avaaz.org] . Even better, open or sign a petitions on the We, the people [whitehouse.gov] site.
Won't the DHS put me on some kind of list for being a "domestic extremist"?
Don't they just send the cops, the goon squads, in to 'disperse' the demonstrations with mace bombs, rubber bullets, batons, and sometimes even those newfangled sonic and microwave compliance rays? Occasionally some real sadistic fuck opens fire into the crowd with his automatic rifle or shotgun and shows everyone who's boss.
Government agents will just be sent in to 'get medieval' and to restore order through delicious violence and lusty skull cracking, and fill entire buses with new prisoners. In the eyes of the police the only good citizen is one who is already in custody or in the morgue.
Eventually the only way to have a real demonstration will be to arm the crowd with AR-15s with laser sights, plenty of ammo, and level IV body armor. To give the cops pause. Police are generally cowards at heart. They've probably never experienced a an actual fair gunfight in their whole career.
Frankly some kind of revolutionary army is going to be the only way to change the current broken and corrupt system. Unfortunately, by the time enough people are sufficiently motivated to risk their lives in such an endeavor everyone will be too closely monitored for it to work.
I'm a Libertarian. So I don't have a horse in the Democrat vs. Republican race. But there really is a large group of Republicans which for decades has been known as the "religious right". At least since the sixties. In fact it is probably the dominant segment of the Republican party. Religion plays a strong but implicit role in many of their ideas. Democrats are still generally Christians, but they are less likely to take it seriously, and aren't generally interested in passing laws motivated by tenets of their religious beliefs. So I think the OP was mostly correct in his analysis. Religious motivation is probably one of the few real differences between the Republican and Democratic parties these days.
It used to be that Democrats were known for supporting personal freedoms of the kind that the ACLU are known to fight for, but unfortunately the party seems to have moved past all that now, fully embracing the true goodness of the government in every aspect of our lives.
It used to be that Republicans were concerned with financial freedoms: taxes and business regulation and relatively free market economics, but didn't particularly care about personal freedoms, like the freedom not to be pulled from your house, beaten half to death, and thrown in jail on false charges by the police, who, in their view are inherently pure and can do no wrong.
In general the modern Republican party cares even less about personal freedoms, like the right to continue breathing, or not to be falsely imprisoned, or even murdered without a trial, than it used to, and they have even backed off a bit on the idea of financial freedom as well. No one wins elections these days by promising liberty of any sort. It just isn't popular anymore.
Honestly, I'm not even sure what Democrats want anymore. It seems like they have gotten a lot of what they wanted in the economic realm. In terms of personal freedom, well, that's a real mystery to me. I'm not sure they have any horse in that race at all anymore. Almost as if the Democratic party is solely an economic platform now. More taxes and more social services maybe? But not too much because that would make them socialists and that would be too extreme and philosophical for them. Too much of a strain on the brain. God forbid either Democrats or Republicans had to think for themselves. That's far too much work.
Neither party really thinks in terms of ideas or fundamental philosophy. There is never any discussion of principles like ethics or human rights. Of course when the religious right thinks of 'ethics' they think of the bible. Of things like commandments from a supernatural being.
Both groups are pragmatists through and through. Focusing only on narrow issues or pragmatically band-aiding various social problems with knee jerk solutions that even a child should realize will be full of unintended consequences. Or secret intended ones driven by corporate bribes.
If you want to make the semantic/linguistic argument that "third world" is a pejorative term then just go ahead and do so. I am all ears. I use the term and do not consider it even slightly pejorative. It just denotes a country without basic infrastructure that first world countries take for granted. Things like clean water, hospitals and a high standard of medical care including those expensive machines that go 'bing', a communications network, a system for collecting garbage more elaborate than people just burning it in their yard, schools and universities that actually teach non-trivial subjects, and average wages more than, say, $50 a month.
I have lived in quite a few third world countries, and I think of as "third world". If you feel that "developing world" is somehow more polite then, again, go ahead and make that argument. Maybe you are right, but you haven't offered any evidence. If you can offer some evidence for its offensiveness then I would certainly consider no longer using the term.
Well there's the the ninth amendment, but that's obviously ignored by pretty much everyone, lest we have some kind of apocalyptic tsunami of freedom.
It would be awfully nice if we could enumerate every human right: a free internet, freedom to travel by means which did not exist in the 18th century, and lots of other human rights which the constitution does not explicitly enumerate, relying on the ninth amendment to make it clear that the constitution should not be interpreted as a list of all the things the government can't do, but rather as a list of all the things it can do. If it isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution it's supposed to mean that the government doesn't have that power. Rather than it being a privilege bestowed on us by our generous government overlords. Presumably we are supposed to feel lucky that we are allowed to travel by horseless carriage or mechanical flying machine at all. Or communicate freely via electrical impulses across wires or via electromagnetic waves through the air.
When everything is a privilege bestowed on us by our government, it is quite easy for such a government to simply revoke any or all of those whenever it wishes. This is why the concept of human rights exists in the first place. It's a recognition that those in power will always seek to wield that power in whatever way they believe is in their best interests.
Too many Americans believe that their only human rights are those enumerated in the bill of rights, but that simply isn't the case. The founders never intended it as an exhaustive list of every right. For instance they didn't include the right to breathe or eat or drink or sleep without government interference. Presumably because they couldn't imagine a government tyrannical enough to try to interfere with those things. An unfortunate failure on their part.
They should have taken the long view and assumed that things would be created by man which they couldn't even imagine at the time and that the government should be at least asked nicely to keep its greedy, grubby paws of those things as well. There were some who had the foresight to realize that the bill of rights might give the impression that those were the only rights citizens of their new republic would have. Not that it would have helped to have excluded the bill of rights. The government would simply have claimed that since it isn't explicitly forbidden, they are free to do whatever they wish. No matter what the constitution was always just a piece of paper. No piece of paper has ever stopped those hungry for power and control from taking whatever steps necessary to insure it. In our history all branches of the government were in agreement that a literal interpretation of the constitution would leave them impotent and grant too much power to the citizenry. In retrospect it really was quite naive of the founders to expect the government to interpret their document in such a way. All they had to do was pretend the ninth amendment didn't exist and that is precisely what they did. Perhaps they should have had another amendment that stated, "DO NOT IGNORE THE 9TH AMENDMENT!", but they would have just ignored that amendment as well.
It seems to me that with something like Kickstarter it would be pretty easy for any musical artist to get pre-funded as long as he has some good songs to post as enticement or already has some renown for making good music. I think this whole crowd-sourcing patronage idea is going to be game changing in a lot of artistic fields. A new paradigm for the digital age. Music, film, game development, fiction writing. Basically anything that can be represented digitally and distributed to people who make donations is a natural to be directly funded by fans or potential fans of the work. I would like to think that this could lead to a Tunguska level explosion of creativity, a new Renaissance for a new age as part-time artists with a day job can suddenly quit and work on their craft full time. Once they get funded piracy doesn't matter. Your loyal fans will still buy a legit copy and the free riders are irrelevant. The artists are happy because they are getting paid to do what they love. The fans are happy because their favorite artists are encouraged to exercise their talents as much as possible. And the bloodsucking middlemen are left out in the cold where they belong.
Hand in your geek card. You're not allowed to dance. And if you try you should be laughed at. I gave up trying to dance after the first girl who laughed at my pathetic attempts.
And they're better left alone. Let's be careful with those rose tinted glasses. In terms of technology things sucked back then. Things are much better now. I'm old enough to remember 8" floppy disks and all I can say is "good riddance". I hated those BBSs. What a pain that was. And downloading files even with zmodem was so painfully slow.
I will admit however that I have never been able to find a suitable replacement for the cRPG forum on Compuserve or some of the usenet discussion groups. But pretty much everything else sucked. Technology is one of the few things in the world that get better with time.
One thing that does seem to have changed for the worse however is the discussion level in forums. I remember discussion forums in the 90s as being a lot more polite and deep, with walls and walls of text and no one complaining about it and well thought out, intelligent replies. Nowadays if a message is too long to have fit in a cell phone text message it is considered a lengthy, impossible to read, wall of text.
Even on slashdot, I remember the discussions being better 10 years ago. There was a time when the majority of slashdotters even used Linux and knew how to write code. Maybe even assembly language (gasp). It used to also have a high percentage of Libertarians, which was interesting. Now Slashdot seems to be dominated by liberals, socialists, and greens. There was a time when any mention of Democrats vs Republicans was responded to with "What's the difference?". There are still replies like that but they are overwhelmed with hundreds of replies from genuine Democrats and Republicans bickering with each other about their petty differences.
It might have been just my youth, reacting emotionally to everything, but I lusted after Apple IIs and TRS-80s the way one might lust after a hot girl. Much later I also found the Amiga 500 quite fetching, but I'm glad I held off buying a computer again until I finally got my 486-33 in college.
They seemed to have their own personalities. Unfortunately my father has never liked computers and my first computer was an Atari 400 with 64k and a disk drive that I had to buy with my own money. I knew I could never afford something like a TRS-80 with dual disk drives. I think there was even one computer game that I liked that was only available on the TRS-80.
How many times are you going to reply with this silly joke? That's the problem with some of us oldsters. We don't realize when we are not funny and just annoying?
Slashdot Mirror
With Active SETI we might be able to find more than indirect evidence. EM waves can travel a lot faster than any spaceship we could build. For systems only 100 ly away it would take at least 200 years for a reply and there is no guarantee that they are listening in the microwave or visible spectrum. They may be so advanced that radio or laser communication would be the equivalent of trying to communicate with smoke signals. Clearly it's still a long shot, but a lot less of one than with passive SETI, which relies on getting massively lucky.
If we really wanted to we could build a galaxy-scale microwave beacon for less than the cost of a manned mission to Mars. By galaxy scale I mean targeted, directional radio pulses powerful enough to reach the galactic center. A pulsed laser would have fewer beam spread problems, but I don't think we have any lasers powerful enough to travel that distance while still being detectable.
The marketing department wasn`t responsible for the complete rewrite of the graphics driver model as well as the subsequent re architecture of DirectX.
What makes you so sure? Do you work there or something? Microsoft is most definitely a marketing driven company.
XPx64 however is shite.
Can you be a bit more specific?
No, 64 bit xp doesn't count and has never counted. Try to find drivers for it.
All of my devices have XP x64 drivers, including some older, somewhat obscure RAID cards. I find the driver support to actually be pretty good. OTOH, one of my devices does not have driver support for Windows 7. In fact that is the main reason that I don't multiboot with Windows 7. Lack of driver support.
greater than 4 gigs of ram
Windows 7 32 bit does not support more than 4 gigs and Windows XP x64 supports as much RAM as you've got. OS X and Linux also support more than 4 gigs and both are far superior to Windows 7.
SSD and trim command support
Fair enough, but you are also going to have significantly less room on that SSD of yours due to Windows 7 bloat. I believe OS X also has trim support now and it is a far superior OS even if you hate the dock as I do.
better SMP support
Noticeably better? I run a dual core CPU on XP x64 and both cores seem to operate just fine.
Supperior security for all browsers due to better DEP and other security enchancements
Again how much better is the DEP support in Windows 7? XP SP2+ also has DEP support.
Touchscreen
Riight. Now that's an important feature. Who the fuck even uses a touchscreen for a desktop OS?
multi que async with Sata and PATA drives
Whatever that is I don't think I need it. XP has full command queuing support for SATA drives.
Much better security
Fair enough. There are some real security improvements in Windows 7. Along with the trim command security is the main reason to upgrade to Win 7.
What makes you so sure Windows 9 is not going to have a tablet focused UI as well? A businessman is at the Microsoft helm now. Not a geek like Gates. So it can be expected to make decisions based purely for monetary reasons. Not for tech reasons. If a techie had been in charge of decisions by now we might have been blessed with a small, efficient MinWin kernel that operates under a user selectable choice of GUI to better compete with Linux. Instead we have moronic decisions leading to primary support for tablets first and then desktops and even laptops as an afterthought as well as one of the most bloated OSes ever created by man. Certainly nothing to be proud of from a tech perspective.
You do realize that windows 7 is not free right? What makes it so much better than XP that it is worth spending money on 7 that could be spent elsewhere? I run Windows XP x64 and I just don't see any pressing reason to 'upgrade' to 7. 7 does take up a lot more disk space and I think some of the GUI decisions are horrible enough that I pretty much have to go back to a Windows Classic theme to escape from it and non-indexed search has been dumped, and it takes up a huge amount of hard drive space compared to XP, Arch Linux, or OS X, and it's a bit of a memory hog compated to those OSes as well. But otherwise it really isn't too bad of an OS. Linux and OS X are both obviously superior, but it's not that terrible. I wish microsoft would separate the GUI from the rest of the OS though. Linux is vastly superior in that sense. I love being able to choose my own GUI style in Linux. I don't see how shoving the same GUI down everyone's throat can be considered a good thing.
In its favor Windows 7 definitely boots faster than any version of XP and it's more secure because running programs as a non-admin user is much better supported and it has the trim command for SSDs. Although I don't yet own an SSD. Ironically if you are upgrading to Windows 7 for the SSD support you will also suffer much more from the drive space bloat problem since you may only have 60 GB and Win 7 can grow to take up a significant percentage of that with its greedy WinSxS folder. The hard drive space issue can be somewhat mitigated by installing Windows 7 Embedded, which I think is a better OS overall than the standard versions of Windows 7.
There may be some other minor improvements as well. But I don't see that any of them are so great that it is worth the cost of the new OS. Aside from the money one of the biggest reasons I haven't upgraded to triple boot XP x64, Win 7 x64, and Arch Linux is that my sound card doesn't have drivers for 7, and I like my sound card. I'd have to spend hundreds of dollars to properly replace it. My sound card does have Linux drivers, strangely enough.
4a (variant). Devspeak: "The game is DRM-free because we wanted to ensure a good experience for our customers." English: "Our contract doesn't include royalties. We get paid the same regardless of how few or how many copies the game sells. Under the circumstances, DRM is just more work for us, and our bottom line isn't dependent on sales or piracy. If we had to self-publish, this shit would be loaded with StarForce or require online connections for offline play."
Only an irrational developer would spend extra money that could have lined their pockets on something that, rather than increasing sales, will decrease them. There is always going to be some nonzero number of potential customers that choose to pirate instead of purchasing because they are against DRM or just don't consider a product that you don't even really own outright worth purchasing. DRM has been proven time and again that it will not stop the free riders from just downloading the superior DRM stripped version. So all you've really done is lose some quantity of sales that you would have otherwise had. The idea that you will prevent even a single person from downloading and playing the superior DRM free version is pure delusion.
I will be helping to fund Wasteland 2 and I do see it as an investment. Not every reward has to be monetary. A donation would imply that I am not expecting any reward for myself. It would just be to help others. That is clearly not the case here. My motivation is most definitely *not* altruistic. Far from it. It is 100% purely selfish.
There is most definitely risk involved. Brian Fargo could put his 2 1/2 million in a suitcase, and disappear with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life. There are no strings attached to the money. There is a huge element of trust involved and that's where the risk comes in.
If you purchase shares in a company the best case scenario is that you make some extra money. Money that you can use to buy products that already exist in the marketplace.
With kickstarter I am gambling my $100 (or whatever) with the hope that my ROI will be a game that I will enjoy playing and which would not have come into existence without thousands of people like me taking that risk. The fact that the ROI is not cash does not mean that it does not exist.
In addition to the reward of the kind of game I like to play which would never otherwise be made there is the additional benefit of voting with my dollars for more such games to be made in the future as well as for the crowdsourced patronage funding model itself which might result in projects that would also never otherwise be realized. Many artistic fields are influenced by the demand of real investors that the work appeal to as many people as possible to maximize their monetary ROI leading to a compromise of artistic integrity and, at best, mediocre works. By funding any kickstarter project, especially a high profile one, I am also voting for future projects that I might otherwise never experience. Not just computer games, but also films, novels, and music.
Comrade Members, like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting--but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.
Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.
This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the only way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation. . . or by age. . . or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large---and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.
You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous--think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.
But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about ten thousand human beings, perhaps seven thousand of voting age--and some of you were elected by slim majorities. Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out--many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels--correctly!--that it has been disenfranchised.
But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent--the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
But in writing your constitution let me invite attention the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies . . . no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation. . . no involuntary taxation. Comrades, if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your government should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the o
I don't think it is individual men who tend to have such power. Yes, money is power in a way. With enough money someone could even finance his own private army of millions of soldiers and overthrow the government itself. But that sort of thing is rare and is just the price for individual liberty.
Remember that, without the help of the government, corporations have far less power. If our government were not so corrupt then perhaps corporations might have been somewhat useful. Although I don't believe shirking responsibility and making society pay dearly for a free insurance policy was ever a good thing.
Limited liability corporations that are treated as individuals themselves are a blight on society. They are too powerful. They are the only legal entities that can approach the power of even a small government. For that reason alone they should be feared and controlled if at all possible.
I consider myself a Libertarian, but I believe that limited liability corporations should be outlawed. That's right. They should be illegal. Treated as a kind of conspiracy or a form of organized crime. No sort of limited liability should be offered by the government. That is the beginning, the root of fascism. Once government tyranny is stopped, large concentrations of power as found with megacorporations should be dealt with in some way.
In fact this process of vigilance for concentrated forms of power such as corporations is one of the better justifications for having at least a small government. Having said all that, historically governments have nearly always been the source of repression and tyranny. The sort of SciFi dystopian future where corporations have the real, direct power of governments and have their own private police forces that subjugate the populace to their will has so far been limited to fiction. That's not to say that it is not possible and that it should not be feared, but at the moment the opponent with the knife to our throats is a corrupt government. In an ideal world politicians would not accept bribes and their votes could not be purchased for any price. Obviously that is not the world we live in however, and the corporations responsible for buying these laws have to be held responsible as well. There are people at those corporations who should be hanging from lamp posts along with the politicians agreeing to take away our freedoms.
Freedom means being able to do anything you want as long as it does not affect the freedom of others to do the same. It means that the police cannot come to your home at 3 AM and drag you into a prison cell for something you posted on slashdot. It means that you are not a slave who exists only because the government allows it.
A free society is one in which people don't have to fear that everything they value, everything they have, their very lives can be taken at the whim of a government.
You can never be free from the difficulties of life. A lot of the time life just sucks. Freedom won't change that. And freedom never means the freedom to violate other people's rights. I suspect you know that, which makes me curious about your agenda.
Liberty is the opposite of slavery. It means that no government or any other powerful interest has the legal right to interfere with your life unless you have yourself already interfered with someone else's. It means as much fairness and justice as is possible in a world full of selfish, sociopathic, vicious, evil thugs whose only mission in life is to hurt and control others.
The idea that the people are the government is exactly the sort of brainwashing that serves their purposes well. No matter what they do. No matter what laws they pass that beat us down and violate our most basic rights as sentient beings. They can enslave us. They can imprison us. They can take everything we value. Our very lives. And all we will do is moan about how it is our own fault because "we are the government".
I am not the government. I don't support them in any way. I don't support the laws they pass. I didn't vote for any of the people in power. I have absolutely no responsibility for what they are doing.
In the end a civil war is the only thing that will save this country, but people will have to be willing to kill and to die and to see blood off innocent people running in the streets. For children to be obliterated before they've even had a chance to live. For all the ugliness that comes with war. Especially war against a much stronger adversary. One with nearly limitless funds and all the power of modern technology. To face an army terrifying enough to take on the greatest of the worlds governments. One that could face down China or Russia or even Japan or Germany or the UK. What can a disorganized army of volunteers do against a force as mighty as that?
just sign the petitions on EFF [eff.org] and avaaz.org [avaaz.org] . Even better, open or sign a petitions on the We, the people [whitehouse.gov] site.
Won't the DHS put me on some kind of list for being a "domestic extremist"?
Don't they just send the cops, the goon squads, in to 'disperse' the demonstrations with mace bombs, rubber bullets, batons, and sometimes even those newfangled sonic and microwave compliance rays? Occasionally some real sadistic fuck opens fire into the crowd with his automatic rifle or shotgun and shows everyone who's boss.
Government agents will just be sent in to 'get medieval' and to restore order through delicious violence and lusty skull cracking, and fill entire buses with new prisoners. In the eyes of the police the only good citizen is one who is already in custody or in the morgue.
Eventually the only way to have a real demonstration will be to arm the crowd with AR-15s with laser sights, plenty of ammo, and level IV body armor. To give the cops pause. Police are generally cowards at heart. They've probably never experienced a an actual fair gunfight in their whole career.
Frankly some kind of revolutionary army is going to be the only way to change the current broken and corrupt system. Unfortunately, by the time enough people are sufficiently motivated to risk their lives in such an endeavor everyone will be too closely monitored for it to work.
I'm a Libertarian. So I don't have a horse in the Democrat vs. Republican race. But there really is a large group of Republicans which for decades has been known as the "religious right". At least since the sixties. In fact it is probably the dominant segment of the Republican party. Religion plays a strong but implicit role in many of their ideas. Democrats are still generally Christians, but they are less likely to take it seriously, and aren't generally interested in passing laws motivated by tenets of their religious beliefs. So I think the OP was mostly correct in his analysis. Religious motivation is probably one of the few real differences between the Republican and Democratic parties these days.
It used to be that Democrats were known for supporting personal freedoms of the kind that the ACLU are known to fight for, but unfortunately the party seems to have moved past all that now, fully embracing the true goodness of the government in every aspect of our lives.
It used to be that Republicans were concerned with financial freedoms: taxes and business regulation and relatively free market economics, but didn't particularly care about personal freedoms, like the freedom not to be pulled from your house, beaten half to death, and thrown in jail on false charges by the police, who, in their view are inherently pure and can do no wrong.
In general the modern Republican party cares even less about personal freedoms, like the right to continue breathing, or not to be falsely imprisoned, or even murdered without a trial, than it used to, and they have even backed off a bit on the idea of financial freedom as well. No one wins elections these days by promising liberty of any sort. It just isn't popular anymore.
Honestly, I'm not even sure what Democrats want anymore. It seems like they have gotten a lot of what they wanted in the economic realm. In terms of personal freedom, well, that's a real mystery to me. I'm not sure they have any horse in that race at all anymore. Almost as if the Democratic party is solely an economic platform now. More taxes and more social services maybe? But not too much because that would make them socialists and that would be too extreme and philosophical for them. Too much of a strain on the brain. God forbid either Democrats or Republicans had to think for themselves. That's far too much work.
Neither party really thinks in terms of ideas or fundamental philosophy. There is never any discussion of principles like ethics or human rights. Of course when the religious right thinks of 'ethics' they think of the bible. Of things like commandments from a supernatural being.
Both groups are pragmatists through and through. Focusing only on narrow issues or pragmatically band-aiding various social problems with knee jerk solutions that even a child should realize will be full of unintended consequences. Or secret intended ones driven by corporate bribes.
If you want to make the semantic/linguistic argument that "third world" is a pejorative term then just go ahead and do so. I am all ears. I use the term and do not consider it even slightly pejorative. It just denotes a country without basic infrastructure that first world countries take for granted. Things like clean water, hospitals and a high standard of medical care including those expensive machines that go 'bing', a communications network, a system for collecting garbage more elaborate than people just burning it in their yard, schools and universities that actually teach non-trivial subjects, and average wages more than, say, $50 a month.
I have lived in quite a few third world countries, and I think of as "third world". If you feel that "developing world" is somehow more polite then, again, go ahead and make that argument. Maybe you are right, but you haven't offered any evidence. If you can offer some evidence for its offensiveness then I would certainly consider no longer using the term.
Well there's the the ninth amendment, but that's obviously ignored by pretty much everyone, lest we have some kind of apocalyptic tsunami of freedom.
It would be awfully nice if we could enumerate every human right: a free internet, freedom to travel by means which did not exist in the 18th century, and lots of other human rights which the constitution does not explicitly enumerate, relying on the ninth amendment to make it clear that the constitution should not be interpreted as a list of all the things the government can't do, but rather as a list of all the things it can do. If it isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution it's supposed to mean that the government doesn't have that power. Rather than it being a privilege bestowed on us by our generous government overlords. Presumably we are supposed to feel lucky that we are allowed to travel by horseless carriage or mechanical flying machine at all. Or communicate freely via electrical impulses across wires or via electromagnetic waves through the air.
When everything is a privilege bestowed on us by our government, it is quite easy for such a government to simply revoke any or all of those whenever it wishes. This is why the concept of human rights exists in the first place. It's a recognition that those in power will always seek to wield that power in whatever way they believe is in their best interests.
Too many Americans believe that their only human rights are those enumerated in the bill of rights, but that simply isn't the case. The founders never intended it as an exhaustive list of every right. For instance they didn't include the right to breathe or eat or drink or sleep without government interference. Presumably because they couldn't imagine a government tyrannical enough to try to interfere with those things. An unfortunate failure on their part.
They should have taken the long view and assumed that things would be created by man which they couldn't even imagine at the time and that the government should be at least asked nicely to keep its greedy, grubby paws of those things as well. There were some who had the foresight to realize that the bill of rights might give the impression that those were the only rights citizens of their new republic would have. Not that it would have helped to have excluded the bill of rights. The government would simply have claimed that since it isn't explicitly forbidden, they are free to do whatever they wish. No matter what the constitution was always just a piece of paper. No piece of paper has ever stopped those hungry for power and control from taking whatever steps necessary to insure it. In our history all branches of the government were in agreement that a literal interpretation of the constitution would leave them impotent and grant too much power to the citizenry. In retrospect it really was quite naive of the founders to expect the government to interpret their document in such a way. All they had to do was pretend the ninth amendment didn't exist and that is precisely what they did. Perhaps they should have had another amendment that stated, "DO NOT IGNORE THE 9TH AMENDMENT!", but they would have just ignored that amendment as well.
It seems to me that with something like Kickstarter it would be pretty easy for any musical artist to get pre-funded as long as he has some good songs to post as enticement or already has some renown for making good music. I think this whole crowd-sourcing patronage idea is going to be game changing in a lot of artistic fields. A new paradigm for the digital age. Music, film, game development, fiction writing. Basically anything that can be represented digitally and distributed to people who make donations is a natural to be directly funded by fans or potential fans of the work. I would like to think that this could lead to a Tunguska level explosion of creativity, a new Renaissance for a new age as part-time artists with a day job can suddenly quit and work on their craft full time. Once they get funded piracy doesn't matter. Your loyal fans will still buy a legit copy and the free riders are irrelevant. The artists are happy because they are getting paid to do what they love. The fans are happy because their favorite artists are encouraged to exercise their talents as much as possible. And the bloodsucking middlemen are left out in the cold where they belong.
Hand in your geek card. You're not allowed to dance. And if you try you should be laughed at. I gave up trying to dance after the first girl who laughed at my pathetic attempts.
And they're better left alone. Let's be careful with those rose tinted glasses. In terms of technology things sucked back then. Things are much better now. I'm old enough to remember 8" floppy disks and all I can say is "good riddance". I hated those BBSs. What a pain that was. And downloading files even with zmodem was so painfully slow.
I will admit however that I have never been able to find a suitable replacement for the cRPG forum on Compuserve or some of the usenet discussion groups. But pretty much everything else sucked. Technology is one of the few things in the world that get better with time.
One thing that does seem to have changed for the worse however is the discussion level in forums. I remember discussion forums in the 90s as being a lot more polite and deep, with walls and walls of text and no one complaining about it and well thought out, intelligent replies. Nowadays if a message is too long to have fit in a cell phone text message it is considered a lengthy, impossible to read, wall of text.
Even on slashdot, I remember the discussions being better 10 years ago. There was a time when the majority of slashdotters even used Linux and knew how to write code. Maybe even assembly language (gasp). It used to also have a high percentage of Libertarians, which was interesting. Now Slashdot seems to be dominated by liberals, socialists, and greens. There was a time when any mention of Democrats vs Republicans was responded to with "What's the difference?". There are still replies like that but they are overwhelmed with hundreds of replies from genuine Democrats and Republicans bickering with each other about their petty differences.
Wasn't AOL reserved for the non-geeks who had trouble finding the power button?
What was wrong with the TRS-80? I quite liked them.
It might have been just my youth, reacting emotionally to everything, but I lusted after Apple IIs and TRS-80s the way one might lust after a hot girl. Much later I also found the Amiga 500 quite fetching, but I'm glad I held off buying a computer again until I finally got my 486-33 in college.
They seemed to have their own personalities. Unfortunately my father has never liked computers and my first computer was an Atari 400 with 64k and a disk drive that I had to buy with my own money. I knew I could never afford something like a TRS-80 with dual disk drives. I think there was even one computer game that I liked that was only available on the TRS-80.
How many times are you going to reply with this silly joke? That's the problem with some of us oldsters. We don't realize when we are not funny and just annoying?